Mumbai, Oct 26 (IANS): Maharashtra Governor C. V. Rao Saturday directed the director general of police to appoint a special task force to probe the brutal killing of three members of a Dalit family in Ahmednagar district last Tuesday.

The governor spoke to DGP Sanjeev Dayal asking him to set up a STF to investigate the incident in Javkheda village, which has sparked an outrage in the whole state.

Terming the incident as "act of gross cruelty" which could not be tolerated, Rao also announced compensation of Rs.375,000 to the family.

The governor's directions came following a meeting with a 20-member delegation of Republican Party of India (A) President Ramdas Athawale which called on him at Raj Bhavan to discuss the issue.

Rao informed the delegation that he would shortly convene a high-level meeting to review all the cases of atrocities against Dalits and seek an effective implementation of the Scheduled Caste & Scheduled Tribes (Preventio of Atrocities) Act.

thawale complained that four days after the incident, the police have not arrested the killers of Sanjay Jadhav, Jayashree Jadhav and Sunil Jadhav and sought a compensation of Rs.1.50 million to the survivors.

He pointed out that this was the fourth major incident of atrocities against Dalits in the Ahmednagar district and demanded that the entire district be declared as "atrocity-prone".