#Khairlanji Massacre, 2022
16 years ago, on this day, a mob of dominant-caste men and women attacked a Dalit woman and her 3 children in Maharashtra’s Khairlanji village.
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16 years ago, on this day, a mob of dominant-caste men and women attacked a Dalit woman and her 3 children in Maharashtra’s Khairlanji village.
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She had been fighting for her land rights against the dominant castes who had encroached on her small piece of agricultural land.
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Enraged by a Dalit woman’s assertiveness, dominant castes dragged her, her daughter, and two sons out of their home, paraded them naked, raped the woman and her daughter, and lynched all of them in public.
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It took more than a week for the news to appear in print media. Protests against the incident slowly swelled, with over 20,000 people marching to the Chief Minister’s office on 14 November 2006 in protest. However, a rape charge was never brought by the government.
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When the verdict in the murder case was announced by the Bhandara Special Court in 2008, it held 8 people guilty of murder and acquitted 3. The court refused to invoke The SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and held that the murder was not motivated by caste.
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This led to huge protests by Dalit rights organisations and the lone survivor, Bhaiyalal. Bhaiyalal had long since left the village, working as a peon, a job given to him as “compensation” for the butchery of his family. He died on 20 January 2017.
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The convictions of the 8 accused were affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2019. But the institutional failure to recognise the rape of the victims, the invisibilisation of caste by courts and government authorities raises the question of whether justice was in fact achieved.
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