85YO Dalit Widow Vs. The System: Santra Devi’s Decade-Long Fight For Her Land

On the dusty outskirts of Jaipur, where new construction eats into the last stretches of farmland, an 85-year-old Dalit widow has been fighting a battle she never imagined she’d face, one against the very system that was supposed to protect her.

Machwa village, on Jaipur’s edge, looks like many other expanding pockets of the city, scooters weaving through narrow lanes, tea stalls buzzing with gossip, half-built houses rising from dry earth.

In the middle of it all sits Santra Devi, who has spent more than ten years trying to reclaim two bighas of land that once fed her family.

Her husband received the land decades ago through a government welfare scheme meant to lift the poorest families toward security.

It wasn’t much, but for them it meant everything: food, dignity, and a future. Today, that patch of soil has been buried under concrete. 

A popular builder owns it now, based on a photocopy of a forged sale deed and a shopping mall is said to be coming up where wheat once grew.

A Land Lost on Paper

When her husband died in 2013, Santra Devi believed his land was safe. But two years later, two housing societies appeared, claiming he had sold it to them.

The paperwork they showed was impossible, she says. The sale deeds were dated after his death, his signature clearly forged.

There were no revenue stamps, no Collector’s approval, and no record of any sale in the official files.
And yet, the land changed hands.

One transfer led to another until the plot became a line of commercial shops, each now worth several lakhs. The trail of ownership is so tangled that no one in the area seems sure who truly owns it.  

“The land where I grew wheat and bajra will now have showrooms,” Santra Devi says quietly. “I’m still waiting for justice.”

Bureaucracy and Silence

Her fight has taken her through nearly every government office in Jaipur. She has met Tehsildars, Collectors, and clerks of every rank.

She’s filed petitions with the Scheduled Castes Commission, written to MLAs, and even approached the Chief Minister’s office.

Everywhere, she says, she was asked to wait. Some officials expressed sympathy; others waved her away. None acted.

“It’s not just her,” says a local activist who has been helping her navigate the maze of paperwork. “Across Rajasthan, Dalit families are losing land this way, not to drought or debt, but to forged documents and powerful builder lobbies. Once construction begins, nobody wants to interfere.”

The Weight of Injustice

For Santra Devi, the legal language means little. What she talks about is izzat, dignity.

“My husband worked all his life for this land,” she says, clutching a worn file of documents tied with thread. “It was given to us because we were poor. How can someone just take it away?”

Each day passes quietly. She sits outside her small tin-roofed home, watching the road across which the shops now hum with business. The land that once fed her family now feeds the city’s hunger for growth.

“When I see those shops, I feel like they’ve been built on my chest,” she says. “But I won’t stop fighting.”

A Larger Pattern

Her case is not an isolated one. Land disputes involving Dalit families have been surfacing across Rajasthan for years.

Reports have pointed to the same pattern: forged papers, complicit officials, and builder groups ready to capitalise on every bureaucratic gap.

For Dalit women, the loss carries an extra sting. Land isn’t just property; it’s identity, a rare source of independence. Losing it often means being pushed back into invisibility.

“Once construction starts, it’s treated as final,” says a retired revenue official familiar with such cases. “For the poor, the burden is to prove they exist. The powerful just have to show papers.”

Refusal to Give Up

Despite her age, Santra Devi still walks to offices when she can, her file of papers held tight to her chest. Each receipt and acknowledgement is stored carefully, proof that she has not stopped trying.

“Thak gayi hoon, par rukungi nahi,” she says. “I’m tired, but I won’t stop. If I stop now, I’ll die before my time.”

The irony is bitter; land meant to empower a Dalit woman has become a symbol of profit for the city’s elite. Still, she refuses to surrender.

Nikita has spent the past eight years working in the social media space and has recently begun exploring her journalistic voice. A lifelong feminist, she is deeply committed to women’s issues and is driven by a desire to tell stories that create awareness, empathy, and change.

Views expressed by the author are their own.