Revisiting A National Shame Called Khairlanji

This is not a pretty picture. But then this is not a pretty story.

On September 29, 2006, a group of villagers in Khairlanji village in Bandara district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra forcibly entered into the house of one of the residents, Bhaiya Lal Bhotmange. Bhotmange wasn't at home at that time. The crowd dragged Bhotmange's wife, his teenaged daughter and his two sons out of the house, beat them with stones, iron rods and anything else that they could get hold of.

The four members of the Bhotmange family were dragged into an open area about 50 yards from their house. Bhotmange's wife and daughter were stripped naked and gangraped by the villagers until they died. His two sons were beaten and stabbed, their bodies repeatedly thrown up in the air and, according to eyewitnesses, the lynch mob cheered as the bodies crashed on the hard ground. It went on until both the boys were dead.

Why was the Bhotmange family killed in such a gruesome manner?

The Bhotmanges were among four Dalit Buddhist families who lived in Khairlanji, a village dominated by OBC (Other Backward Classes) families. The Dalits are at the lowest rung of the social ladder in India, where the society is divided on caste lines. About 160 million Indians are Dalits or `untouchables', social pariahs who live a life that any civilized nation wouldn't consign its animals to.

Unlike most Dalits in the area, the Bhtomange family was comparatively well off. The two sons worked with their parents on their land and daughter Priyanka was in her final year of school.

Village landlords were upset both over the prosperity of this Dalit family, and their decision to educate their children. On several ccasions, there had been run-ins between the upper caste villagers and members of the Bhotmange family. On a number of instances, Bhotmanges had sought police intervention when standing crops on their field were destroyed by the landlords.

On September 3, 2006, a family friend of the Bhotmanges had been violently assaulted by a group of villagers. A few days later, Bhotmange's wife Surekha identified eleven men in a police line up as the offenders. On September 29th, these men were picked up by the police and then let off on bail by the court. The same evening, these eleven men led the lynch mob to Bhotmange's house.

No one knows the exact number of men who raped the two women. Eyewitnesses have said, the women were raped even after they had died. One of the women who works with an NGO which is fighting the Bhotmange case in court told me that parts of agricultural implements were shoved up the private parts of Priyanka, Bhotmange's daughter.

Bhaiyalal Bhotmange was working in the field when his family was attacked. He saw the crowd dragging his family members out, and ran to the next village to seek help. His friend called up the police to inform them of what was going on. By the time a solitary police constable reached Khairlanji a good few hours later, night had descended on the village, the mob had disprsed, and there were no signs of Bhotmange's family members.

The Andalgaon police post is 15 minutes' walking distance from Khairlanji. After they first received the complaint it took the police over four hours to reach the spot where the lynch mob had taken its own sweet time to strip the Botmange family naked and then gangrape the women and beat the boys to death.

Next afternoon, Bhaiyalal's daughter Priyanka's body, without a stitich of clothing on her, was found in a canal. Over the next few hours, police teams found the bodies of Bhaiyalal's wife Surekha, and his two sons Roshan and Sudhir from different locations in the village. A day after the incident no First Information Report had been registered by the police.

It was only when the news of the killings spread word of mouth and angry Dalit groups began to protest against government inaction, the local administration got its act together. By then, valuable evidence had been lost, the accused had sufficient time to cover their tracks.

The Maharashtra government sensed the outrage among the Dalits over the Khairlanji incident and sent its most prominent prosecutor Ujwal Nikam to Khairlanji. Nikam was the high profile government prosecutor in the 1993 Bombay blasts case. The move to send Nikam was as much to assuage Dalits as to ensure justice for Bhotmange's family.

Visiting Khairlanji a year after the incident, I met Nikam at Bhandara where eyewitness statements are being recorded in the sessions court. The case, it appeared to me, was progressing at a snail's pace.

Already the case is losing momentum, allege the activists of an NGO, whose rally in Nagpur five days after the Khairlanji massacre first woke up the local administration. Originally 41 persons were arrested in the case, thirty of whom have been subsequently set free. Only eleven remain behind bars today. NGOs working in the area claim that there is sustained pressure on the eyewitnesses to reverse their initial deposition.

They (the eyewitnesses) live in the same village as Bhaiyalal did. Shocked by the gruesome nature of the incident, they deposed before the police and the court. Now as each day passes the pressure on them mounts to take back their statements. As this case gets delayed and activists and media lose interest in the Khairlanji case, these eyewitnesses understandably fear they might meet the same fate as Bhaiyalal and his family. Not surprisingly, NGOs in the area are worried hat in the coming months, the eyewitnesses may turn hostile.

Nikam, however, insists that this case is taking no less or no more time compared to other cases. He says there was no provocation for doing what was done to Bhotmange's family. He tells us : "The prosecution will demand death penalty for those accused of killing the members of Bhotmange's family. They were killed in the most brutal manner."

The Bhandara superintendent of police Suresh Sagar is himself a Dalit. Sagar admits: "No cognizance was taken of the complaint and the local police were lax in conducting an immediate investigation." He agrees that a search could have helped preserve crucial evidence of rape, especially. The first information report was registered after 24 hours.

Despite eyewitness accounts that Bhotmange's wife and daughter were gangraped, the prosecution has dropped the rape charge. The charge was dropped on account of "lack of evidence". Reporting for Frontline, a leading Indian fortnightly, weeks after the incident, Lyla Bavadam observed: "The post-mortem was handled in a slipshod manner. Dr. K.D.Ramteke, civil surgeon at Bhandara Civil Hospital, said: "The most basic post-mortem calls for preservation of viscera. This was not done by the doctor-in-charge."

The doctor who conducted the post-mortem was dismissed but he claimed that the police did not ask for a test of rape. However, Dr.Ramteke said, "Finding a violently beaten and naked body of a young girl automatically calls for vaginal swabs as well as the usual procedure to remove the uterus and other internal organs."

The post-mortem report said that the cause of death was through intracranial haemorrhages. Incensed, Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, demanded a second post-mortem. "I always suspected rape," he told Lyla Bavadam of Frontline, recalling the scene of his family being dragged out of the hut. When the bodies were exhumed, they were in an advanced state of decomposition. Bavadam wrote that Dr.Ramteke had recommended that "on the basis of circumstantial evidence (the probability of) rape should be considered."

An eerie calm prevails in Khairlanji as you enter the village. A police post at the entrance of the village notes down the number of the vehicle going in -- indicating that this is no ordinary village. Inside the village, about 50 yards from Bhotmange's now-abandoned hut, and a stone's throw away from the open space where his family were lynched and raped, there is another police post with four policemen. One of them is reeking of alcohol. "We are here to maintain peace," says the man in khaki, who appears to be struggling to maintain sobriety.

The small hut in which Bhaiya Lal's family lived lies abandoned today. There's an old, rusty lock on the door, across which there is a worn out piece of tape which announces this is a "scene of crime" and thus out of bounds. Long grass has grown outside the hut, and policemen warn of snakes. A cheap high-heeled shoe is lying amidst the grass. A piece of evidence that the police overlooked? Or was it dragged in by a stray dog?

Bhaiya Lal hasn't been to his house -- or the village -- since the day the bodies of his family members were discovered. The cowshed is empty, the cow gone. No one tills the land that was the original source of dispute between his family and the landlords.

He now works as a peon in a boys' hostel in Bhandara, the princely job that the Maharashtra government has deemed it fit to compensate him for the loss of his entire family.

On a dark, drizzly morning, we wait outside the boys' hostel to have a word with Bhaiya Lal. The boys in the hostel can't tell much about Bhaiya Lal. They say he is a quiet sort of fellow, who usually keeps to himself. Bhotmange arrives at about 11 a.m., pillion riding on a motorcycle driven by a security guard provided by the Maharashtra government.

For the first few minutes after I have introduced myself, Bhaiyalal chooses to look at a vacant spot above my head. And then as he slowly, haltingly begins to speak, his answers seldom extend beyond the monosyllabic. He speaks sparsely, but his haunted eyes convey a myriad of emotions.

Through his troubled, distraught eyes, one can see the moment he discovered the body of his only daughter. And then when he heard of the other bodies, he realized that his entire family had been wiped out.

Through broken, inarticulate sentences, he manages to say two things. First, that he does not care for the rest of his life. And, second, that he wants justice for his family.

I ask Bhaiyalal if he is planning to go to the court hearing. He shakes his head. Just five minutes' driving distance from the boys' hostel where we interviewed Bhotmange is the Bhandara district and sessions court.

At the court gate, khaki-clad policemen frisk the people going in and, not quite sure who's inside, they salute every passing car with tinted glasses. For some inexplicable reason, they look in a distinctly unfriendly way at the common people.

Inside the courtroom, the eleven accused sit in the last row of benches. On the front row, counsels argue over finer points of law. On the witness stand, one of the eyewitnesses waits for his turn, unwilling to look into eleven pairs of eyes on the last row. Someone asks Ujwal Nikam about Bollywood star Sunjay Dutt and this involvement in the infamous Bombay blasts case. Even the judge leans closer in the seat, waiting to hear Nikam's answer.

Suddenly I am glad that Bhaiyalal chose not to come today. Sitting in the courthouse, I can't help but wonder that the tardy follow up and the slow pace of court proceedings seem as much part of the system which killed the Bhotmanges as the lynch mob which actually carried out the killings.

That morning in the court, from where I was sitting, justice for the Bhotmange family seemed a very very long distance away.