Hindutva Terrorists massacre Budhist Family in Mumbai, India

Hindutva Terrorists massacre Buddhist family in India

Milind Reporting from India

Small village in Bhandara district in Maharashtra has been focus of attention when four member of one dalit family was slaughtered on 29th September 29th, 2006 in bhandara district. Victims are Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s wife surekha, 44, his daughter priyanka, 18, sons, roshan, 23, and sudhir, 21.The fact finding team of vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti visited on 6th October to village kherlanji to know the details of this barbaric killing and they were shocked to learn that , Bhaiyyalal`s wife surekha, 44, his daughter priyanka, 18, sons, roshan, 23, and sudhir, 21, were first stripped naked, dragged from their hut to the choupal 500 meters away and hacked to death by the entire village of the so called upper-castes. vJAS has moved with the fact finding committee report to national human rights commission(nhrc) for independent probe of this dalit massacred as all political parties and local administration are covering up the matter as till date no mla or mp from bhandara has visited the village or Bhaiyyalal, more than a week after the gruesome killing took place. Two mlas from Nagpur, ostensibly sent by the congress higher-ups, visited kherlanji, but did not make any noise. The police are not acting fast and the only two prime witnesses are under threat. Not a single villager’s statement has been recorded. Neighboring villages are living with fear and terror, especially the minority lower castes dalit to dared to demand the right of land were slaughtered in order to give other dalit in villages of Mowadi taluka of bhandara district .

As per the fact finding report dispute of dalit killing is portion land owned by Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s wife “surekha’s only fault was that she’d challenged the village upper-castes and that too the landlords. And she’d dared to crave for self-esteem and dignity,” as told by a broken Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, 50, a dalit farmer, a shadow of himself today. lAST week, he helplessly saw brutality and barbarism knock on his door and wipe off his family – his wife and three children. His worst fears came true September 29.

As kherlanji wears ghostly silence, ostensibly sheltering injustice, Bhaiyyalal packs up his house – a cramped hut with nothing in it actually – to move in with his in-laws at Deulgaon village, 20 km away. But fear and terror emanates from his swollen eyes, mirroring the truth that the entire government administration, the police and the political class are fighting hard to cover up for a week now.

But the kherlanji`s bestiality is too hard to be suppressed. As per details provided all relatives to the fact finding committee the barbaric details are Bhaiyyalal’s wife surekha, 44, his daughter priyanka, 18, sons, roshan, 23, and sudhir, 21, were first stripped naked, dragged from their hut to the choupal 500 meters away and hacked to death by the entire village of the so called upper-castes, but not before demonstrating the savagery that sends shivers down the spine of a mauled Bhaiyyalal, the lone survivor and fallen family’s headman.

The meek farmer is yet to come to terms with the incident that he witnessed from some distance hiding behind a hut. He’s broken and shudders every moment, uncertain of his life, confused and fearful. It has been a week but nobody has spoken to him from the government administration about the mass killing.

VJAS has drawn the attention of NHRC toward the fact that “Surekha and her daughter priyanka were humiliated, bitten, beaten black and blue and then gang-raped in full public view for an hour before they fell dead. “The marauders had pushed sticks into their private parts,” says a policeman, asking not to be named. The two sons were kicked and stabbed repeatedly. The assaulters then mutilated their private parts too, disfigured their faces and tossed them in air before the twosome lay dead on the ground.
“When the dusk had settled, four bodies of this dalit family lay strewn at the village choupal, with the killers pumping their fists and still kicking the bodies. The rage was not over. Some angry men even raped the badly mutilated corpses of the two women.”

“not a single woman, save one, from the village tried to intervene or stop their men from doing it,” cries Bhaiyyalal. “i was too terrified to run to their help.” Intriguingly, the post-mortem report says surekha and priyanka were not raped.“Doctors were managed, and the police bribed,” alleges Rashtrapal Narnaware, Surekha’s nephew. “Every one in kherlanji knows what happened with my aunt and cousins, every one was a witness to the heinous crime,” he says furiously. The police now await the report of second autopsy that was done on October 5 by a team of doctors after exhuming the bodies buried at Deulgaon following mounting pressure. Police admit the bodies were without even a shred of cloth.

Bhaiyyalal says the kherlanji villagers, who perpetrated the crime, called for a village meeting an hour after the incident with bodies still lying on the road and issued a ‘fatwa’that nobody would open their mouth about the incident.in kherlanji, villagers don’t speak. “They won’t,” says a policeman sent here to maintain ‘law and order’ situation. “But frankly,” he says, “the incident shows that there was no law and no order for years; there isn’t any even today.”Police say the assaulters threw the bodies at different places in the periphery of the village.

Priyanka body was recovered from a canal only the next afternoon, and that was how the matter came to light. But the police and administration, dictated by a political regime that sensed deep trouble, saw to it that even the dalit leaders kept mum, as the incident would have been explosive during the October 2 dhammakranti anniversary programme at Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi. Kherlanji is a village of 780 people – about 170 households, some 50 km north of bhandara town off the Tumsar road. From Nagpur, it would be about 120 km. It falls in Mohadi Tehsil. The Bhotmange’s were one of the two Mahar families of the village that is dominated by the OBC`s, the landlord clans here. Bhaiyyalal had moved to this village to farm his mother’s 5-acre land about 18 years ago. But it was surekha, who tilled her farm and fought for regaining the hold over a portion grabbed by the upper castes, which is a decisive political force in this part. A cramped hut of the Bhotmange’s stands proof of their abject poverty.

Despite that, surekha toiled hard to send her children to school and then colleges.Priyanka, a NCC cadet who dreamt of joining the armed forces, was preparing for her HSC this year, Bhaiyyalal wails. “My wife saved some money last year and bought her a bicycle,” he tells us. “She was very intelligent.”The two sons helped them in farming and earned extra money by working as laborers. “Routinely the villagers drove tractors over our standing crop.”
“Surekha,” says her inconsolable sister Sudan raul, “was taught a lesson because she fought for her land.
She feared their end was nearing.” just a week ago, says Sudan, surekha came with her daughter to visit us, and said the villagers would not spare them. But no one had ever imagined such a shocking end.“Not one of her children could survive,” says Drupata bai, Surekha’s old mother, with her eyes fixed on the ground. “Did the murderers not have a heart?” The plot was meticulously planned. First, the village heads tarnished her character. They propagated that she had illicit relation with the police-patil of neighboring Dhusala village Siddhartha Gajbhiye, who was actually her cousin. Siddhartha, a dalit too, was the only person who stood by this family. The district superintendent of police, Suresha Sagar, holds: “this incident is the height of brutality.” He clears surekha had no illicit relations with Siddhartha.hE admits the andhalgaon police did not attend to the calls of the Bhotmanges, or investigate the crime immediately after the incident. Siddhartha had in fact made a desperate call to the police station when he learnt that the Bhotmange’s were being slaughtered. “the call was made around 6.15 pm,” says Bhaiyyalal.32 persons have been arrested so far. Many more arrests would follow. aS of now, the main perpetrators are still free, say the deulgaon villagers.The SP reveals he is issuing the suspension orders to a PSI and a head constable at Andhalgaon police station, under which the village falls.But the police lapses seem far more and too grave.

The police had refused to lodge the complaints of the Bhotmange’s for over a decade now. That is since the woman took up the cudgels to recover the lost portion of land. they clearly sided with the landlords, says Rashtrapal, and that was the reason why even Siddhartha went to Kamptee and got himself admitted to a private hospital after being beaten almost fatally by the kherlanji village lords on September 3. That was the provocation of the latest tension that culminated into the September 29 mayhem.The things had come to a boil. “The villagers had pronounced that killing a mere Mahar family of the village wouldn’t harm any of them,” alleges Bhaiyyalal, fighting hard his tears, as he recounts living in years of the village-regression.

Siddhartha’s younger brother Rajendra took him to Kamptee in nagpur district, 100 km from the village, because he knew it was safer.“here, it would have been too risky for him,” says Siddhartha’s son Rahul, who’s doing his engineering from a private college at Ramtek. The doctors at the private hospital realized that this was a police case, and then referred him to the government hospital at Kamptee. The Kamptee police lodged an offence and referred the case back to the bhandara police for investigation.tHAT was when the offences were registered against 14 persons of kherlanji, and when the police paraded the accused for identification, surekha and Bhaiyyalal identified them, notwithstanding the reigning threat of a village-goon and one of the masterminds of the heinous crime.

On the morning of September 29 the 14 persons were arrested and produced before a Mohadi court and released on bail. No sooner had they been set free than the persons first drove down to Kandri, a village ten km from kherlanji, in search of Rajendra and Siddhartha. But when they did not find them, they rushed to their village baying for the blood of the Bhotmange’s. When they reached the hut of the dalit family, they found surekha and her children preparing the evening meal; Bhaiyyalal was not at home. They were armed with sharp weapons and sticks, informs Bhaiyyalal, who was at a stone’s throw away distance when the assaulters were dragging his children and wife having stripped them off their clothes. Rajendra was with him. And they both witnessed the murderous assault unfurl before them over the next one-and-a-half hour or more, before the two slipped out in to darkness to safety. NHRC has been asked to order independent probe of this dalit massacred and sack the collector in charge of the district .Appropriate compensation to tune of Rs.25 lacs is also demanded by VJAS to NHRC.

A Flag over the dead : Dilip D'souza

INDIA OUTRAGED A FLAG OVER THE DEAD The writer travels to Kherlanji in Vidarbha to find cynical caste and political games being played on a horrific massacre DILIP D’SOUZA THE MAN The first time I see Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, he’s one in a crowd knotted around Bhalchandra Mungekar, once-Vice Chancellor of the University of Bombay and now Member of the Planning Commission. He is listening to him — Mungekar — speak, right outside his — Bhotmange’s — house. He is a slender nondescript sort in a striped shirt and grey pants, just another face that you might see in a typical day but hardly register. In this crowd, he might be a media-droid like me, or a police-droid like others here, or just another hanger-on-droid like most of the rest in the crowd. Dilip D’Souza Which, in fact, now that I think about it, he is: a hanger-on in this great whirligig that has, starting with the murder of his family, spiralled relentlessly outward. I mean, this is the man’s own house. From this house, his own fellow villagers dragged his wife Surekha and teenage daughter Priyanka and slightly older sons Roshan and Sudhir, beat and mutilated and finally killed them, all while he hid and watched, terrified for his own life. Inside his house are the remains of lives snuffed out: spit-and-polished steel plates on a rack, cup hanging from a hook, belt lying on the ground, 12th standard Samaj Shasan Navnit textbook on a cot, bundles of fading clothes here and there, stickers on the front door of a pretty film star on a bicycle and Sanjay Dutt holding a gun to his temple. A month and a half after it happened, he has returned to his own house in a car carrying the once-Vice Chancellor, trailed by other cars full of cameramen and journalists and policemen and even a fellow with a sinister machine-gun at the ready. Most of these people squeeze into his own house with him, and the cameramen film every movement Mungekar makes in there, looking at the plates, leafing through a book, asking gentle questions about the family that once lived here. And when Mungekar steps back into the sunlight, ndtv and e-TV and wxyz TV set him up to be one of their talking heads for the evening news. They ask him many grave questions. What does this mean for dalits? Why are our laws not applied? Are caste crimes on the increase? How could this happen in the land of Phule and Ambedkar? And that’s when I first see Bhaiyyalal, wedged in the crush somewhere in the land of Phule and Ambedkar, somewhere between his own front door and Mungekar. I sidle through the crowd, behind the cameras, under the sinister gun brushing my neck on it, under a too-low branch of a tree on which my shirt catches, to Bhaiyyalal’s side. Too late. lmno TV has him in front of their camera now. From behind it, a man asks: Will you take the job the chief minister offered you? Will you take the compensation, will you come back to live in Kherlanji, what do you want done now? pqrs TV takes over, asks much the same questions but in a different language. Will you won’t you why how where who what? Tell us Mr bhotmange, how do you feel? Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, whose family was lynched in Kherlanji Bhaiyyalal can’t or won’t answer questions as he stands at the spot where his family was butchered Bhaiyyalal is mute. He cannot or will not answer these questions as he stands at the spot where his own family was slaughtered. Head down, eyes closed, silent. Yes, occasionally he says something of no particular consequence. Then he returns to silence. Years ago in Orissa’s Erasama devastated by a cyclone, I watched a similar TV crew try to get an orphan to talk. (Delhi’s told us to find an orphan, the reporter told me). Similar results. I try now what I tried then. Look, I say quietly to Bhaiyyalal when the TV crews have given up and returned to Mungekar, I have no camera, I’m by myself, I just want to sit with you and talk. I won’t even write down anything if you’d like it that way. He nods his head. There outside his home, we chat for a while, then arrange to meet again. Which doesn’t happen. Twenty-four hours later, he begins vomiting and is admitted to the icu in the Bhandara Government Hospital. Doctor’s orders: no visitors for a week. THE MOOD Approaching Kherlanji earlier that day, a lady cop flags us down. Having heard reports of the climate here now, I’m worried that she’s stopping us to say we can go no further. But no, she just wants a lift the last few kilometres to the village, where she is supposed to join the “police point” (her words). She is inordinately grateful for the lift, sits in the back humming to herself. At the police point — the square in the centre of Kherlanji — she leaps out, directs me to a line of sitting cops and vanishes into a building. A cop in a purple vest strolls over to a desk with a large notebook, to take down my name and such. My driver says he will take care of this while I go meet some of the villagers. I’m nearly at the other end of the square with one villager when there’s a shout from behind and I have to run back to submit the vital detail all Kherlanji visitors must submit to the police. Father’s name? asks the cop. Tea with a clump of Kherlanji’s residents, and they begin to talk. Slow and guarded at first, but more and more voluble as the minutes pass. They want to talk, they want someone to listen. There’s a lot of fear in the village. The “sangathan-waale” (members of organisations) come every day and shout slogans here, threaten us in front of our homes! What sangathan, I ask, though I know what they mean. Shrugs. Who knows? People with big blue flags, been coming now for a month. Right, we had passed such a group soon after picking up the lady cop. Then they ease into their story of Kherlanji, the telling kicked off by Urkuda Khurpe. This police patil Siddharth Gajbhiye — you know, Surekha Bhotmange’s relative — he used to come often to the village. He owed some money to Sakhru Bhinjewar, so one day Sakhru went to him and “lovingly” (Khurpe actually says “pyaar se”) asked for it back. Gajbhiye did not return it. Two or three days later Sakhru tried again. This time Gajbhiye was drunk, shouted “What money?” and slapped him twice. Suresh Khandate told Gajbhiye to go back to his village, Dhusala. Gajbhiye left, but not before running into Jagdish Mandlekar in the square and telling him, you wait, in a couple of days I’ll do an “operation” on you! Sakhru’s and Jagdish’s sons, enraged by Gajbhiye’s behaviour, threatened to beat him. Gajbhiye took off on his motorbike towards Kandre village, but fell off it near a stream on the way. That’s where the sons caught up with him and, Khandate says guilelessly, “there must have been some fight there.” Convoluted? Certainly. But this approximates what happened on September 3, the trigger for the events that culminated in the murders of the Bhotmange family. For Gajbhiye’s brother Rajan filed a police complaint about the assault near the stream, and Surekha identified 12 (some say 15) villagers who were taken into custody. On September 29, Tulsiram Titirmare went to a bank for a crop loan where he met Rajan, who asked Ramprasad Khurpe to have tea with him. When they sat down, Rajan took out a sword and threatened Ramprasad with it. Ramprasad was very frightened by this so he sat quietly in the bank. Later that day, the 15 villagers were released on bail and came back to Kherlanji. At which point Urkuda and Suresh and Tulsiram — who have taken it in turns to tell me this Mahabharat of a story — all disappeared into their homes and have no idea what happened next. Though of course we know what happened, as they certainly do even if they don’t want to say so to the Bombay journalist. That evening, a mob swarmed the Bhotmange’s hut and killed the family. DIRTY DRAWING: A police sketch of the spot where Ankita’s body was found ‘Just 125 houses in this village,’ he says, ‘and 44 people in jail for this incident, saheb!’ In the way of several such I’ve heard, this account is an incomprehensible mix of characters and events and extreme villainy met with polite entreaty, pass the pinches of salt won’t you? And it’s these villagers clustered around drinking tea who want me to believe that they are living in terror of the “sanghatan-waale”, the dalit activist groups who have been visiting Kherlanji to protest this killing of lower by upper caste. Later, Urkuda and Kashiram Khouse take me on a leisurely tour of Kherlanji. It’s an almost pretty place: lush green fields, some brightly painted houses, others (like Tulsiram’s) with flowering creepers on compound walls. But every entry point to the village has a police barrier, some more at random spots inside. There’s a police sign listing various instructions, and a paunchy cop lying asleep on the porch of the Hanuman temple. People sit in the teashops talking, looking furtively at us as we pass. Slogans are everywhere (sample: “Gharchi izzat nako rastyat, sofa sandas banva sastyat” — Don’t display your home’s self-respect on the road, make sofas and toilets cheaply). Kherlanji, Kashiram says, was working towards winning the government’s “Clean Village” award. Now this incident has spoiled any chance of that. Apropos of nothing, Urkuda tells me Kashiram is a Chamar, a lower caste. Then both say almost simultaneously, we have always lived in peace. All castes in Kherlanji have always got along perfectly. Using his hands to mime the action, Kashiram says that when he would go to the village well, the higher castes would willingly give him water. I don’t know if he feels the irony in even telling me that much, and in any case I find it hard to believe talk of years of blemishless harmony. Then Urkuda outdoes himself. Just 125 houses in this village, he says — and 44 people in jail for this incident, saheb! Think of it, almost every house has lost someone! He exaggerates to make his point, yes, but I’m so struck by this attempt to make me feel for the accused that I actually stop in my tracks, struggle to stay poker-faced. We’ve heard about communities in which every family has lost a son to war, we know how poignantly that brings home tragedy. Feel it here in the same way, Urkuda means, because 44 are in jail for a ghastly murder. In a Roald Dahl kind of way, Kherlanji is unsettling. Almost pretty. THE QUESTIONS The next morning, I am in a government office in Bhandara listening to Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal men argue with a district bureaucrat and a police officer. They want permission to hold morchas to protest a killing a month ago. Naturally, I think: Kherlanji. But no. The bureaucrat underlines this. There is no connection between Kherlanji and this crime, he stresses. This was the abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Ankita Lanjewar on October 13. The accused is Sudhakar Ramteke, a known history-sheeter with 32 — 32! — cases against him, but he is still at large. No sign of the man’s arrest, so the Sena and Dal people want to shut down Bhandara on November 13 to protest. So what can we expect if we don’t grant you permission, asks the bureaucrat, “tod-phod”? Everyone laughs uncertainly. Bhaiyyalal is a pawn in great roiling cynical battles he has little knowledge of Outside, the men say to me: Ankita’s murder had nothing to do with caste, it was just a rape and murder. But the people here have begun to ask questions. They see the fuss over Kherlanji — of course that should never have happened and we want those culprits to be punished — and they see that Ramteke is still free, and they start thinking of caste. Why? Because this is Kherlanji in reverse: the lower killed the upper caste. The genial Dal man puts me in touch with Ankita’s mother, Kalpana. It takes a while to find our way through crowded narrow Bhandara lanes to her home. A young boy volunteers to lead us the last stretch, and as we walk he says in a quiet voice: But this was something else, wasn’t it? They say she did it for the insurance. He sticks that thought in our heads, points out her house from a distance, and is gone. Kalpana is distraught. The man took my daughter from right here, she says. But he’s free, and suppose he returns to attack me and my other daughter? All those police in Kherlanji, but don’t I deserve some protection? Shouldn’t at least one of those leaders have come to visit me? And see what he did to my daughter, she says, offering me various papers about Ankita, tears starting to flow down her cheeks. The post-mortem is graphic about the condition of the girl’s body, found in a pond some 10 km away. But what wrenches is an odd little drawing in the police report. A few sketched trees, an oval with wavy lines in it to indicate the pond, and at one edge, the outline of a small body. Three small lines inside the outline, indicating panties. That’s how Ankita was found, dead in nothing but panties. When I can bring myself to meet Kalpana’s eyes again, she asks: is it because I’m Kunbi (OBC) and Ramteke is sc that I don’t get justice? This was “just” another murder, “just” a man brutalising a child, yet at this time in this place, how can anyone evade the questions about caste? THE CYNICISM Early one Bhandara morning, I arrange to meet Rashtrapal Naravane, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s nephew, at the Government Hospital where Bhaiyyalal has been admitted. This is the day of the bandh over Ankita’s killing, and it’s on everyone’s mind. The place where we have breakfast has its shutter only half open. As we eat, the proprietor tells a patron there’s to be a bandh. Kherlanji? asks the patron, just that one word. No, says the proprietor, that murder of the girl by the criminal and the police are sleeping. These days, even if you poke someone with a needle there’s a bandh! These days, people are afraid to slap each other, but criminals get away with anything! Rashtrapal is not outside the hospital as he said he would be. I wait, trying not to look at the open sewage, the piles of garbage, the pigs rooting in it all, getting steadily more nervous about what’s going to happen today. Then I try to find Bhaiyyalal on my own, asking my way to the icu through dingy corridors and up grimy stairs. At the icu, a matron tells me he is there, even points out his bed behind a partition, but if I want to meet him I will have to take off my sandals. I do, and enter the room again, the floor clammy underfoot. But now she says I cannot meet him. So does a cop on duty at his bed, inexplicably aggressive when I ask if I can at least know what’s wrong with Bhaiyyalal. Apparently I need to have my sandals off to be told Bhaiyyalal is incommunicado. Back outside the hospital, the crowds are in a sudden tizzy. There are tyres burning on the road, several columns of smoke visible in the sky. Rashtrapal is at the Circuit House, where we finally meet a few minutes later. The first thing he says is, I don’t know why Bhaiyyalal is in the icu! When I last saw him last night he was fine! I think this is just a political stunt (he uses the word “stunt”). In some detail, he tells me about the September 29 murders. I take notes, but my mind is on that one thing he said to start: this is a political stunt. I don’t know if it really is. But it’s clear to me that this whole thing is now bigger than Bhaiyyalal, bigger than four horrible murders, bigger than Kherlanji. This has now ballooned into those eternal Indian realities, Caste and Politics. You have to see it in light of district and municipal elections in Maharashtra, only a few months away. You have to understand this as a test for the UPA government itself, as Mungekar told the press. You have to understand how it sweeps up unconnected incidents, like Ankita Lanjewar’s murder, into the cauldron of caste. Bhaiyyalal is a pawn in great roiling cynical battles he has little knowledge of. And for me, that cynicism is nicely captured in a comment to match the one made by a boy outside Kalpana Lanjewar’s home. One of the Dal men taps my shoulder as we stand talking outside the government office. Look, he says, you’re writing about Kherlanji, right? Better make sure you report his name correctly. It’s Bhotmange, not Bahut-mange. (Loosely meaning “many demands”). Everyone guffaws. > Related Link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=Ne111106Dalits_like.asp

Condemn Heinous, Brutal Killing of Dalit Family and Rape of Mother and Daughter at Khairlanji, Bhandara

COMMITTEE AGAINST VIOLENCE ON WOMEN (CAVOW)

Nagpur dt. 8-11-06, Press Release

Condemn Heinous, Brutal Killing of Dalit Family and Rape of Mother and Daughter at Khairlanji, Bhandara

Dear Friends,

On September 29, 2006, four members of a poor peasant dalit family in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district of northeast Maharashtra were brutally killed in planned mob violence. The women members, mother and daughter were raped, sexually assaulted. All the members were paraded naked and tortured and assaulted on their private parts. Only the father, who was away, working in the fields, escaped this horrible fate.

Since then, Bhandara and Nagpur have been shaken by militant agitations by dalit and women's organizations. On 1st November, some of us from Cavow participated in a huge rally in Bhandara city organized by dalit women's organizations only, under the banner of Samrudhha Boudh Mahila Sangathana,without any political party's presence. About 1000 women participated in his rally. Soon after that sporadic violence, like burning cycle tires, vehicles, including a police jeep and militant demonstrations all over the dalit residential areas and bustees in Nagpur broke out. There were even pamphlets distributed saying that no political parties are involved in this agitation.

This was a way of the poorer sections of the dalit community expressing their frustration with established political parties and their own leaders who only tail behind these parties. But of course, the police department is busy fishing for the invisible hand of left extremists supposedly behind this agitation rather than taking steps to satisfy the angered community*. In fact three activists have been detained since last night (including Ashu Saxena, a woman activist and Anil Borkar who is active with PDFI **Nagpur**).They were in no way connected with the violence and in fact Anil was away from the area attending the meeting of Kashipur Solidarity Committee on the day the incidents happened. Many others from the community, including women have been arrested. There have been severe lathicharge, house raid, arrests and beatings and other forms of state violence.*

Coming back to the incident, the most disturbing factor is that it happened for no major reason, indicating that the poison of casteism has been spread and revived in such a way that those who belong to the majority community, even if it the lower rungs, are confident that they will get away with any barbaric acts. The anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat and the absence of any significant punishment for the guilty have gone a long way in creating this confidence. Almost an entire village of OBCs and adivasis dragged out the Bhotmange family, assaulted, paraded naked, raped and killed them in full public view in broad daylight.

The Samata Sainik Dal has done a fact-finding and brought out a report demanding a judicial inquiry but it was only after Nagpur started burning that a judicial inquiry was ordered. According to the SSD report the incident was as follows: About 16 to 17 years ago, Bhayyalal Bhotmange (the sole survivor) bought some land in this village and built a small ramshackle
hut to reside here. The level of education in the village is very low but the children of this dalit family were going to college and Priyanka, the 19 year old daughter had studied up to 12th standard. This caused a lot of jealousy in the villagers. Another cause of resentment was that due to them buying and cultivating that plot of land the normal path by which bullock carts were driven was blocked and this caused resentment and dispute. There are only three dalit families in the village, two of which are very docile. The Bhotmanges were friends with the Gajbhiye brothers from a nearby village. These boys were very close to the police patil of their village and this gave the Bhotmanges some confidence.

For such petty reasons, that a dalit family is asserting itself, some of the other villagers first attacked Siddharth Gajbhiye and were arrested. According to a report brought out by an NGO from Pune, Manuski Advocay Centre, when the accused were released, the local BJP MLA instigated them that the dalit family would take revenge. Priyanka had already given a
statement as an eye-witness of the assault of Siddharth. So on 29th evening the villagers arrived in tractors with sticks, axes and other such weapons.When the mother Surekha called the Gajbhiyes for help using a cell phone, Siddharth was out. His brother Rajendra rushed to the police station and then cycled to the village.

Though the police station is 15 kms away from the village the police did not turn up. Activists in Bhandara told me that this was due to political pressure from the BJP MLA. When Rajendra reached the village he saw the attack taking place and due to fear hid behind a tree. Surekha Bhotmange (45), Priyanka (19), Sons Sudhir (18) and Roshan (17) were all victims to this barbaric brutality.

One of the sons was blind. Activists say that they were all paraded naked, the women raped, a stick was shoved into the girl's vagina, the brother was told to have sex with the sister and when he refused his genitals were crushed with sticks. All of them were attacked on their private parts by axes etc and finally killed.

The police IG, (Anti-Naxal Operations) Pankaj Gupta has denied that the women were raped but activists feel that the post-mortem report was managed by the police. Now about 44 of the villagers are in jail but no one is speaking up as a witness. On the contrary rumours are being spread that the family was selling liquor and into prostitution. In fact the media too irresponsibly reported that the family was attacked due to an illicit relationship between Surekha and Siddharth. As always, conservative morality, targeting the reputation of women is the psychological weapon of Hindutwa fascist forces to justify their heinous crimes. As if illicit relationships or selling liquor can be any justification for such an attack.

But when the state government bans bar-girls and the police round up couples from parks and beat them up, even the state is giving this message to the people. As for the media, they are too taken up with high society cases like Jessica Lal to spare any time or space for poor dalit women like Surekha and Priyanka.

But the dalit community and dalit women have fearlessly brought out the truth and even though the official bodies like the State Human Rights Commission, Women's Commission and political parties ignored this incident they came out on the streets to fight for justice. Such incidents are part of the growing fascist trends, where in the background of Globalization and
increasing hardships on the poor, the ruling classes are trying to unite the Hindu majority on an anti Muslim, anti Dalit banner. Those who fall prey to this, like the lower caste, peasant families of Khairlanji are themselves being made fools of, like pawns in the hands of the exploiters, who are using casteism and communalism to divide the people. Cavow calls upon all women's organizations to protest against the Kharlanji rape and murders and to support the struggle of the people against casteism.

1.Shoma Sen, Convenor of CAVOW