8 convicted for Dalit killings in Khairlanji

But court rules out caste rivalry

BHANDARA: Ruling out caste rivalry as the reason for the 2006 Khairlanji massacre, a Bhandara fast-track court on Monday convicted eight persons for the murder of four members of a Dalit family, and acquitted three others.

Pronouncing the verdict, Judge SS Das held that Surekha Bhotmange and her three children were murdered on September 29, 2006, in Khairlanji by the accused to take revenge for Surekha testifying against some of the villagers in an assault case.

 In a major setback to the prosecution, the judge held that the charges that the accused had hatched a criminal conspiracy owing to caste animosity, as the victims belonged to a scheduled caste, and that Surekha and her daughter Priyanka were molested by the mob, could not be proved.

The accused are likely to be sentenced next week after the court hears the arguments
of both the prosecution and the defence teams on the quantum of punishment on September 20.

The accused face a minimum punishment of life imprisonment and a maximum of death penalty for the murder charge.

“Let those who are convicted be given death,” said a stoic Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, the only surviving member of the Bhotmange family, minutes after hearing the verdict in court. Expressing shock at the acquittals and that the accused had been cleared of the caste atrocity charge, he added, “Some of the real culprits were not even brought before the court. But there was enough evidence against the 11 accused who were put on trial.”

Absolving all the accused of charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, the judge said the atrocity charges did not come on record, either in the FIR or during Bhaiyyalal’s testimony.

The acquittals under the atrocity charge has shocked Dalit activists, who cited the Khairlanji case as one of the most brutal examples of caste violence in recent times. “We had produced evidence that the accused had hurled casteist abuses and that this was a caste war. We will have to see the judgment to know the court’s reasoning,” said special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.

The court held that the accused got enraged when Surekha, in self defence, set fire to cattle-feed kept in the cattle shed following the assault on her. The accused doused the fire and then beat her and her three children to death. Ruling out the murders to be pre-planned, the judge also convicted the accused for destroying evidence as they had thrown the bodies in a canal.

The court pronounced one of the key eyewitnesses, Mahadev Zanzal, as “hostile” and issued notice to him to explain why he should not be punished. Zanzal’s u-turn during his testimony proved costly to prosecution, Nikam said.

The convicts told DNA that they were being held guilty for a crime they did not commit. “We have no money to appeal before the higher court,” one of them said. The three acquitted said none of them had committed the crime or seen it.