Khairlanji Murders

Khairlanji Dalit Murders: 6 Get Death Sentence

Original article from Deccan Herald.

Ending intense nationwide speculation, the trial court here on 24 September 2008 slapped death sentence on six of the eight convicts in the sensational Khairlanji Dalit murder case while ordering life imprisonment for the remaining two.

The six convicts found guilty of brutally murdering four members of a Dalit family in Khairlanji village of Maharashtra’s Bhandara district are Sakru Mahagu Binjewar, Shatrughan Issam Dhande, Vishwanath Hagru Dhande, Ramu Mangru Dhande, Jagdish Ratan Mandlekar and Prabhakar Jaswant Mandlekar. The two sentenced for life imprisonment are Shishupal Vishwanath Dhande and Gopal Sakru Binjewar.

A frenzied mob of about 50 villagers attacked the house of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, a Dalit farmer 29 September 2006 evening and lynched four members of his family including his wife Surekha, young daughter Priyanka and two sons Sudhir and Roshan.

While the Central Bureau of Investigation handling the case had filed the charge-sheet only against 11 of the original 47 accused and discharged 36, the court had acquitted Purushottam Titirmare, Mahipal Dhande and Dharampal Dhande in its ruling 15 September 2008. The court had also dropped the charges of atrocity and conspiracy against the accused.

On 20 September 2008 first ad hoc sessions judge SS Dass had heard the arguments on the quantum of sentence from both sides in which special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had demanded death sentence for all eight convicts for the ‘frozen blooded’ murder while defence lawyers Sudip Jaiswal and Neeraj Khandewale had pleaded for leniency in view of the convicts’ clean past record.

While Khandewale and Jaiswal said they would challenge the verdict in the appellate court, the reaction of Nikam could not be immediately known.

Find out more information about the Khairlanji murders.

Posted on: October 8, 2008

 


Khairlanji Ruling is Not Fair to Dalits

Original article from Times of India.

Many Dalits across the state are expressing unhappiness with the Khairlanji verdict, with several of them saying the charges made under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act should have been upheld.

Republican Party of India (Kawade) chief Jogendra Kawade said, “I am really unhappy and unsatisfied with the judgement. One must not comment on the judiciary, but I feel that the judgement is not fair to the Dalits. I cannot understand why none of the accused could be punished under the atrocities act. We feel that the government is supporting casteist forces and now they must set up a judicial commission like the Srikrishna Commission to probe this incident.” Kawade also said Dalits must arm themselves for self-protection in cases where the government fails.

While IAS and IPS officers chose to stay silent, finance wizard and Pune university vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav demanded stringent punishment for the accused.

A Dalit activist and assistant professor of TISS, Shailesh Darokar, said, “The CBI and police had arrested 34 people and just 11 were charge-sheeted. The court has acquitted three people. I hope they punish the rest with a death sentence or a life imprisonment.”

Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil has tried to soothe Dalit tempers and said the government would ask the CBI to seek legal opinion and challenge the acquittal of the three accused. “We will demand stern punishments for the accused,” he said.

MPCC general secretary Nitin Rau, who is a Dalit MLA from Nagpur, said he had been flooded with angry calls. “The court has struck down the charges under the atrocities act. My followers are repeatedly asking me why the Act was formulated. Besides, I am also surprised that three people were acquitted. During the debate it was also said Bhaiyalal Bhotmange’s daughter was not molested. If she was not molested, why were her clothes removed. We are not happy with the verdict. I am unhappy,” Rau said.

Rajendra Gavai of the RPI (Gavai) said if the police had been prompt, alert and cautious, all 11 people would have been proved guilty and evidence of rape and atrocity against SC/ST would have been also obtained.

Find out more information about the Khairlanji Murders.

Posted on: October 7, 2008

 


A "Reign of Terror" in Rajasthan

by a special correspondent of The Hindu

JAIPUR: A Dalit man was allegedly murdered near Bilia village in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan this past week on his wife’s refusal to withdraw a rape case against a person belonging to the dominant Gujjar caste. With the prime accused now absconding, Dalits in the region claim that Gujjars are threatening them with dire consequences.

A fact-finding team of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), which visited Bilia earlier this week, found that the brutal murder of Banna Bairwa was the direct outcome of his struggle to get justice for his wife, while police were trying to hush up the rape case and shield the accused, Bhanwarlal Gujjar.

Bhanwarlal, accompanied by two other persons, allegedly followed Banna Bairwa, who was going from Bilia to Sadas village along with two of his friends on a motorcycle on July 6. Bhanwarlal allegedly fired at Banna Bairwa from point blank range, killing him on the spot. Dwarka Raigar, accompanying Banna Bairwa, was seriously injured in the incident.

Pressure on police

NCDHR State monitoring secretary Suman Dewathia alleged here on Wednesday that Gujjars had unleashed a reign of terror in the region and were pressuring police not to arrest the accused, who has since absconded. Police have taken no action to protect the victim’s family and have not even supplied them with a copy of the first information report.

The 12-member fact-finding team, after examining medical reports and documents and interacting with the Dalit community, victim’s family members, eyewitnesses and those defending the accused, reached the conclusion that Banna Bairwa was killed because he and his wife were demanding stringent action against Bhanwarlal on the rape complaint they had lodged against him in Phulia Kalan police station a few months ago.

A delegation of NCDHR, Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR) and Dalit Adivasi Adhikar Abhiyan met the Bhilwara Collector, Hemant Gera, and Superintendent of Police, Mohan Singh, demanding immediate arrest of Bhanwarlal and his accomplices and probe the case in an impartial manner “without succumbing to political pressure”.

CDR Director Satish Kumar regretted that no senior official had visited the village since the murder took place, nor was any action taken to provide security to the victim’s family. “The family of the deceased is entitled to get an immediate financial assistance of Rs.1.5 lakh under Rule 12(4) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989,” he said.

Posted on: July 12, 2007

 


Khairlanji: Dalit murder trial begins

Piyush Pushpak,
CNN-IBN Read original article by clicking here

The CBI, which has been investigating the murders, has been able to chargesheet only 11 of the accused as of yet. The matter is now up for hearing, but the prosecution alleges that witnesses to the massacre are being threatened

image Says prosecution lawyer, Ujjawal Nikam, “I have been told that certain persons are threatening prosecution witnesses. I have instructed local police agencies to keep a close vigilance on such persons.”

Though security was provided to some witnesses, the guards themselves have come under suspicion.

Says Khairlanji Action Committee’s Asit Bagre, “The guard appointed to ensure security for the witness actually started threatening the witness. He was later suspended.”

The defence, on its part, has denied all these allegations. Says defence lawyer, Sanjay Lakhnikar, “These allegations are baseless as the accused are all in jail.”

Seven months ago, the Khairlanji killings had sent shock waves across Maharashtra and there were violent protests at many places, after which a CBI inquiry was ordered.

But with the recent allegations of threat to witnesses, it seems the wait for justice could prove long for Bhaiyalal Bhotmange.

Archived articles at Dalit Freedom Network:

http://www.dalitnetwork.org/go?/dfn/news/dalit_survivor_calls_on_sonia

Posted on: May 10, 2007

 


Stephen Crabb MP: Caste and Human Rights in India

imageFrom the ConservativeHome.com, May, 2007

Stephen Crabb MP is the new Chairman of the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission.

On 29th September last year the wife, daughter and two sons of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, from the village of Khairlanji in the Indian state of Maharashtra, were dragged from their home and lynched in broad daylight.

After being bludgeoned to death by a mob, their mutilated bodies were dumped in a nearby canal. The female family members are believed to have been gang-raped before being murdered.

At the heart of this horrific case was a property dispute fuelled by a toxic mix of caste-based jealousy and prejudice. The killing of these Dalits, and the apathetic response by local police, led to violent protests and the case continues to receive attention from international human rights groups and media.

In February, while on a human rights visit to India with CSW, I was taken to Khairlanji by a group of Buddhist activists who had helped to disseminate information about the massacre in the first days after the event. I later met Bhotmange, now living under police protection, who fears that justice will never be served on those who murdered his family.

Khairlanji represents just one example of the systemic caste-based human rights abuse which still exists in India today, despite a constitutional and legal framework in which “untouchability” is abolished.

During my brief visit in February I was presented with a wide range of evidence of continuing discrimination against Dalits in the fields of education, employment, and access to health services and justice.

On virtually any statistical measure one can choose – literacy, malnutrition, infant mortality, sexual violence – Dalits fare much worse than the national average. Furthermore, Dalits are overwhelmingly the victims of bonded labour and human trafficking, two of the most serious forms of modern slavery.

In March the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission held a hearing in Parliament which took oral evidence directly from a delegation of Dalit representatives visiting the UK.

Last Tuesday we sought to present this evidence to Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon MP in a debate where I found myself being supported by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn MP in calling for the Government to use our friendship with India to help bring justice to India’s 200 million Dalits.

The importance of our relations with India is recognised on both sides of the House of Commons. I have previously argued in Parliament for a stronger trading relationship between the UK and India.

But the pursuit of close economic and political relations must not mean that we remain neutral on issues of caste. As Thomas Friedman says, globalisation has created a world which is now flat. India’s increasing global reach, through its trade and diaspora, means that it should expect the international community to take an interest in the condition of Dalits.

India is a beautiful and wonderfully diverse nation; it is also a truly remarkable liberal democracy. When we speak of human rights issues in India we are talking about a fundamentally different set of issues than those associated with the authoritarian regimes of Burma and North Korea.

In India there is a freedom to debate the issue of caste and an increasingly critical media which is responding to the new aspirations and values of young Indians.

Last December Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first sitting Indian prime minister to openly acknowledge the parallel between the practice of “untouchability” and apartheid in South Africa, describing it as a “blot on humanity”.

I am hugely optimistic about India’s future. But the societies that are likely to do best in the 21st century are those in which the conditions of freedom and social mobility are maximized.

Caste-based discrimination, which constrains the life chances of more than 200 million people, must have no place in the new India.

Posted on: May 7, 2007

 


Dalit survivor calls on Sonia

Special Correspondent from The Hindu

NEW DELHI: Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, the lone survivor of the Dalit family killed in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district of Maharashtra, met Congress president Sonia Gandhi here on Saturday. Ms. Gandhi is understood to have assured him that she would personally follow up the matter.

Mr. Bhotmange was accompanied by local Congress MLA Sewakbhau Vaghaye-Lakhani who said the entire village had ganged up against the Bhotmanges and only a brain-mapping test of the accused would reveal their real intent.

Four members of the Bhotmange family were killed on September 29 over a land dispute. After the killings came to light and questions were raised over investigations by the local police, the Maharashtra police handed over the case to the CBI.

Posted on: December 6, 2006