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.
