Thread by @keerthanaram142

#Vachathi_Humanhunt

1992 June 20,
Vachathi Village, Arur, Dharmapuri dis., TN
Mrs.Gandhimati was working in her fields
Suddenly a police battalion came down in a truck & started to beat her with no reason. They took her into the village & made her sit under a banyan tree

That's when she realized that this cruelty was not only for her but for all the people in the village. Around 250 cottages and 655 people live in this nature-rich village inhabited by tribal people. The nearby Chitheri hills are rich in superior sandalwood trees.

J. Jayalalitha was the then Chief Minister Tamil Nadu &
Sengottaiyan was the Forest Department Minister.
Therefore, the VIPs of the then ruling party AIADMK along with the forest department officers were cutting down the sandal wood trees and smuggled them employing the tribals

At one point, the tribals who had bowed down and worked, refused to smuggle, saying 'don't call us to cut down sandal wood'.
Someone from village leaked the matter of smuggling by the forest officers along with aiadmk VIPs.
Knowing this forest department officials got angry

The previous day, there was a scuffle between forest department and those who refused to cut trees.
They came with a battalion of 300 policemen to retaliate. What happened next was unprecedented even in 300 years of British rule. Even Tollywood masalas couldn't be imagined it

#TheHunt
The forest officers strove to prove who they were to the tribals who beat their fellow officers. They held the government order for Search like a sword. All the people in the village were dragged and made to sit under the banyan tree in the center of the village.

Women, children and the elderly were beaten and made to sit without discrimination. Before the frenzy started, the officials picked only 18 women standing under the banyan tree and took them in a vehicle to the lake shore in the pretext of finding hidden sandal wood logs

Even though there were female guards, they did not go with these women. On reaching the lake shore, each girl was dragged separately and raped by a gang of 4 policemen to prove their masculinity before the tribals. A 13-year-old girl was also there. The torture she experienced

couldn't be described by words. She wasn't even attained puberty.
Those perverts took the women to Arur forest dep. office thro the same vehicle.
Seeing the relatives huddled under banyan tree the women cried, and their loved ones cried seeing the women with their clothes torn.

Houses were ransacked throughout the night materials were damaged. Water sources were contaminated with petrol and kerosene.Jewels and money that were life savings
were stolen.They beat up all the people caught in their hands.Those who were present in the village were imprisoned

Those who went outside were informed to hide into the mountain. To hunt those who fled the village, their women were naked by forcing the village head and the naked women were made to beat the village head with brooms.
This psycho type sadistic cruelty continued for next 3 days

The next day also those 18 women were kept in Arur forest office. The officials cooked and ate the food materials, goats and chickens stolen from Vachathi. 18 women were made to stand in front of pre stacked sandalwood logs and photographed to justify that the action was taken to

stop the Vachati people from engaging in sandalwood smuggling. After being produced before the Magistrate at 5 pm, the 18 women were locked in the Salem Branch Jail. For three days starting July 20, Vachhatti was completely ransacked by the state sponsored terror gang.

Not even a trace of such an atrocity is visible to the outside world. At a time when the Vachathi people were sulking without anyone to cry about the cruelty done to them.
The Chitheri Hill Conference of the Tamil Nadu Hill People's Association of the Marxist Party was held on

July 7,1992.Some of the hill people who participated in the conference highlightef the things they had only half heard, the Tamil Nadu Hill People's Association came down to visit the victims. The village was destroyed,and had been turned into a Ghost city by the police

It was not easy to the Tamil Nadu Hills People's Association to where and how to find the victims
Days went. They could found those who had fled to the mountains and other one by one.
A month later, the petition was sent to the then CM Jayalalithaa by Harur MLA Annamalai

A copy of the petition has also been sent to press.
No news organization was ready to believe this to be true. The same petition was sent a few days later by the Marxist Party then president A. Nalla Sivan to the CM only after that the media started pronouncing Vachathi's name

No one could accept that such an atrocity had happened. With the government and officials steadfastly refusing, the major challenge was to gather evidence.
It was not easy to bail out the 133 people who were jailed, including 90 women, 28 children and 15 men, including 18 raped.

Before Chennai High Court Judge Padmini Jesudurai, a public interest litigation was filed for CBI investigation
The reason given for dismissing the case by the judge should go down in history. Social view of judges and credibility of the judiciary could be understood by the words

"It is not believable that the responsible authorities would have indulged in such activities."
The charges against the Wachhatti people were registered under the Prevention of Atrocities to Scheduled Castes and Tribals Act on the orders of the Supreme Court. In 1995,the case was

was transferred to the CBI. A year later, a chargesheet was filed in the case and the trial was held in the Krishnagiri Special Court for 12 years. Thereafter, the trial was transferred to the Dharmapuri District Sessions Court. In the end, the court ordered a total compensation

of ₹1 crore 24 lakh to the victims in 2011. There were 269 accused in the case that had 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen, and six revenue officials. All the 269 who were accused were sentenced on 29 September 2011. Of the 269, 54 died during the trial.Out of the 17 rapists,

12 were sentenced to 17 years imprisonment and 5 had 5 years. The rest of the accused were sentenced to one to two years in The villagers were denied compensation for a long time. On 12 September 2014, the state government offered a compensation of ₹12.2 lakh to all the victims.

A documentary film about the named as

Warcry of the truth accounts the brutality unleashed on the tribals

Produced by Tamilnadu hill people Association a sub unit of @tncpim