The Bihar HC’s acquittal of all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre case, overturning a lower court’s conviction of 23, has shocked and outraged people across the country. The acquittal has raised urgent questions about justice for the victims of the massacres of rural poor in the 1990s by the feudal landlord army, Ranveer Sena. In this booklet, we recall the social and political context of those massacres and the struggle for justice that followed. We also follow the trail of political complicity and patronage that has allowed the perpetrators to go free, and the continuing struggle for justice. This booklet is an urgent call for justice – justice against the perpetrators of feudal-communal massacres, and also justice for the people of Bathani Tola and Bihar, who defend their aspirations for an egalitarian and free society, defying the most brutal and barbaric attempts to make them relinquish their struggle.
SIXTEEN years ago 21 people – almost all of them women and children including infants – had been butchered in broad daylight in Bathani Tola in central Bihar’s Bhojpur district. That was when the country woke up to the existence of this obscure hamlet and the sordid reality of the Ranveer Sena, a feudal private army that went on to perpetrate a series of horrific massacres in the late 1990s, killing hundreds of people all over central Bihar.
That was the twentieth century and we are now into the second decade of a new century and new millennium. Bihar is now ruled by a government which claims to be delivering ‘development with justice’. The massacres have apparently stopped and in May 2010, the district court in Ara convicted 23 people for the massacre in Bathani Tola, awarding death penalty to three and life sentence to the rest.
At last justice was being delivered to the massacre victims of yesteryear, claimed the government and romped back to power with a bigger majority in November 2010. The oppressed and marginalised rural poor, rechristened mahadalits (dalits among dalits), ati pichhdas (most backward castes) and pasmanda Musalmans (backward Muslims), all reposed considerable faith in the new dispensation.
Two years later, in April 2012, all the 23 convicts have been acquitted by the Patna High Court leaving everybody to wonder who killed the hapless twenty-one in Bathani Tola on that fateful July 11 afternoon in 1996.
How are we to make sense of this High Court verdict? Is it just a case of judicial aberration? On the contrary, records tell us that this has rather been the norm in Bihar – those accused of massacring the rural poor have almost all got acquitted eventually even if some of them may have had to spend a few years in jail as under-trial prisoners. But then aren’t things supposed to have changed in Bihar? Is it not anachronistic to talk of any feudal bias in Nitish Kumar’s ‘changed’ Bihar?
Just as the July 1996 Bathani Tola massacre had served to underline the socio-political character of the Lalu regime, the April 2012 High Court verdict – call it a judicial massacre or Bathani Tola-II – holds a mirror to the dominant socio-political milieu in Nitish Kumar’s Bihar. While the Supreme Court must judicially review the High Court verdict and ensure legal justice for the Bathani Tola victims, political and social justice demands we must understand the context and implications of Bathani Tola and stand by the victims in their battle for dignity and democracy.
When Bathani Tola-I happened many thought it was just another caste massacre rooted in some land dispute. But contrary to this common wisdom, Bathani Tola was an explicitly political massacre carried out with the avowed aim of teaching the CPI(ML) supporters a lesson. It was a massacre perpetrated in broad daylight that targeted women and children, including pregnant women and infants, with a kind of barbarity seen only in genocides marked by the motto of ethnic cleansing. Women were targeted because they would give birth Naxalites, children were eliminated because they would otherwise grow into Naxalites.
Some people believe that private armies like the Ranveer Sena arose in Bihar only as a social reaction to the ‘excesses’ committed by the CPI(ML) in land and wage struggles. It is sought to be pointed out that Bhojpur or its neighbouring districts in central Bihar hardly have the kind of huge landholdings that one would usually associate with feudalism and hence the CPI(ML)’s entire theory and practice of anti-feudal struggle is rather misplaced.
The CPI(ML)’s history in Bhojpur and many other parts of Bihar clearly shows that while land and wages have been important issues, decisive battles often have been fought on questions of human dignity and political representation. This should not come as a surprise if we care to remember that feudal power is exercised and reproduced primarily through extra-economic coercion. Social oppression, various kinds and degrees of bondage and political exclusion have historically been the hallmarks of feudal domination the world over.
If we look at the history of the CPI(ML) movement in Bhojpur, we will see that the right to vote has been one of the most keenly contested issues. In fact, behind the very emergence of the CPI(ML) in Bhojpur was the Assembly election in 1967 in which Comrade Ramnaresh Ram contested as a CPI(M) candidate and he and all his close comrades were badly beaten up and harassed by the feudal lobby which could not stomach this ‘political audacity’ of the oppressed and the downtrodden.
Years later, in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, when large numbers of dalits for the first time succeeded in exercising their franchise and electing Comrade Rameshwar Prasad as the first ‘Naxalite’ member of Parliament from Ara, a bloodbath ensued in Danwar-Bihta village just after the polling and as many as twenty-two persons had to pay with their lives the price for the right to vote.
Bathani Tola had a very similar backdrop. In the panchayat elections in 1978, Mohammad Yunus had become the ‘mukhiya’ (chief) of Kharaon panchayat in Sahar block much to the chagrin of the feudal-communal forces in the area. Under the leadership of this popular mukhiya, poor Muslims in and around Kharaon joined the CPI(ML) in large numbers. In 1995, the Sahar (SC) Assembly seat as well as the adjacent seat of Sandesh were won for the first time by the CPI(ML) and the victorious MLAs were none other than Comrades Ramnaresh Ram – the 1967 CPI(M) candidate was now a towering leader of the CPI(ML) in Bihar – and Rameshwar Prasad, the former Indian People’s Front MP from Ara.
The feudal lobby of Bhojpur became jittery and desperate. The Ranveer Sena was formed with the declared objective of wiping out the CPI(ML) from the soil of Bihar. A communal mobilisation began in Kharaon to deny the Muslim people their customary right to the Imambada and Karbala land. It was in the course of the struggle to defend their land and right that several Muslim families got evicted and had to relocate themselves in the predominantly dalit settlement of Bathani Tola in Kharaon panchayat. It was this united settlement of dalit and Muslim rural poor households that witnessed the macabre dance of death on July 11, 1996.
Massive protests ensued in Bihar following the massacre. One would have expected Lalu Prasad, the self-styled champion of the poor, the backward castes and Muslims in particular, to swing into action. But it took weeks of hunger strike by Comrade Rameshwar Prasad and the octogenarian CPI(ML) leader Comrade Taqi Rahim to make Lalu Prasad order a mere transfer of the DM of Bhojpur for his failure in stopping a massacre of this magnitude that went on for hours, with a police station being present at a distance of just two kilometres, and three police camps between 100 metres to 1 kilometres from the massacre site, without a single bullet being fired by the police. The Ranvir Sena was banned on paper but nobody was arrested and the list of massacres got longer with every passing year. In one of his most revealing political statements, Lalu Prasad announced in a public meeting in Bhojpur that to combat the CPI(ML) he was ready to unite with the devil!
No wonder Bathani Tola was soon followed by Laxmanpur Bathe. At the end of 1997 when the whole country was celebrating the eve of the New Year, the Ranveer Sena gunned down sixty-odd people in cold blood in Laxmanpur Bathe village of Jahanabad district. Bathani and Bathe, two obscure hamlets on two sides of the River Sone became prominent names in national news. KR Narayanan, the then President of India described the Bathe massacre as an act of ‘national shame’. Lalu Prasad was forced to set up a one-man Commission led by Justice Amir Das to probe the political and administrative patronage behind the Ranveer Sena. The commission however kept complaining that it was starved of necessary staff, powers and resources. Meanwhile, the Ranveer Sena got increasingly isolated and in 2002, the Sena supremo Brahmeswar Singh ‘surrendered’ to the state.
In November 2005 Bihar witnessed a change of guard and Nitish Kumar became the chief minister with the BJP’s support. One of the first steps the government took was to disband the Amir Das Commission. The BJP-JDU leaders and even a few leaders of the RJD and the Congress who had all been summoned by the Commission to depose before it heaved a huge sigh of relief. As the second term began, Brahmeswar Singh was granted bail. And now the High Court has acquitted the Bathani convicts while the fate of Bathe hangs in the balance. Nitish Kumar of course waxes eloquent about ‘development with justice’ and Bihar witnessing ‘waves of revolutionary change’ in his tenure.
Bihar has surely changed. From the Jagannath Mishras and Bindeshwari Dubeys of yesteryear, power has passed on to the likes of Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar. Yet Bathani-I and Bathani-II clearly tells us that this power remains as feudal as ever. Nitish Kumar is in an explicit alliance with the BJP, the most organised representative of the feudal-communal lobby in Bihar. Even Lalu Prasad for all his rhetoric against upper-caste domination always went out of his way to appease the feudal forces especially vis-à-vis the rural poor and the CPI(ML). It is not an aberration that the report of the Land Reform commission gets dumped. That the Amir Das Commission gets disbanded before it can produce its report. That the Bathani convicts get acquitted and a mastermind of dozens of heinous massacres is out on bail.
Real change in Bihar does not lie in the changing caste complexion of the rulers. Real change does not lie in the changing political rhetoric of the rulers – whether Lalu Prasad’s slogan ‘social justice’ or Nitish Kumar’s gospel of ‘good governance’. Real change does not lie in the gloss of globalisation and corporatisation added to the semi-feudal political economy of Bihar resulting in spectacular statistical growth on paper.
Real change lies in the tenacity and courage and determination with which Bathani and Bathe fight back for their justice, their dignity and their democracy. Yes, justice, dignity and democracy are not class-neutral words, and are certainly not monopolies of the rich and the powerful. In the wake of the Arwal massacre in April 1986, when Jallianwala Bagh was re-enacted in Congress-ruled Bihar, Comrade Vinod Mishra had written, “when the unceremonious death of the poorest among the peasants in the unknown, unheard of, dingy, mud-tracked, tiny country-town of Arwal begins to shape the political crisis of the powers that be in Bihar, one can safely proclaim that the heroes have finally arrived on the stage.” Regardless of court verdicts, Arwal, Bathani and Bathe refuse to fade away and continue to pump fresh energy into the battle for justice and democracy in Bihar.
In 1974 Bihar challenged the budding autocracy in Delhi with the dreams and aspirations of the youth. When Lalu Prasad’s reign of ‘social justice’ degenerated into scams and massacres, Bihar fought back saying social transformation was a must for social justice. Today when Nitish Kumar’s slogan of ‘development with justice’ is fast turning into ‘injustice with loot’, and ‘good governance’ is giving way to unfettered police raj, every dreamer and defender of democracy must stand by the victims of Bathani Tola to take Bihar forward, upholding the banner of justice and real transformation.
ON 11 July 1996, a private army of upper caste landlords (Ranveer Sena) brutally massacred people 21 (11 women; five girls below 10 years; four boys below 8 years; and one man) in the hamlet of Bathani Tola of Bhojpur (Bihar), most of whom were dalit and Muslim landless poor. The massacre began at 2 in the afternoon, and for the next three hours, assailants from the neighbouring Badki Khadanv village set fire to huts, slashed at women and children with swords, and fired shots. There was a police station a mere 100 metres away, and 3 other police camps about 1-2 kms away in different directions. But no police interrupted the dance of death, and Bathani Tola was left to defend itself.
An Ara sessions court in 2010 convicted 23 for the massacre, sentencing 3 to death and 20 to life. And in April 2012, the Bihar High Court acquitted all 23. The Nitish Kumar-led Bihar State Government has announced that it will challenge the acquittal in the Supreme Court. But its real intentions behind this formal posture can be gauged by the comments of one of its Ministers Giriraj Singh, who has opined that the “Bathani Tola massacre case should be nipped in the bud. The issue should not be discussed any more as it could vitiate the atmosphere.” Yet again, this episode illustrates the pro-feudal foundations of the Nitish Government that underlie its pro-poor posturing and rhetoric of ‘Justice with Development.’
Nayeemuddin Ansari, one of the survivors and key witnesses, who lost 6 women and children of his family in the carnage, asks, “Who killed 21 people that afternoon, if it wasn’t those we named in the FIR?” Nayeemuddin, Srikishun Choudhury, Radhika Devi, Marwari Choudhury, Lal Chand Choudhury, and other survivors, ask: “Who will take responsibility for our lives, now that all those we gave evidence against are free?”
But the answer to those questions is one that feudal-communal forces and their political patrons seek to suppress and erase from history. But the survivors of Bathani Tola are not just victims – they were, and are, fighters, who refuse to be defeated or silenced. The memorial to the martyrs of Bathani Tola will not allow those 21 innocents to be forgotten – and the quest for justice for those 21 will continue.
So, who killed 21 at Bathani Tola and why?
MASSACRES of dalit rural labourers by dominant-caste armies were nothing new in Bihar. But in its sheer scale and ferocity, the Bathani Tola massacre marked a new phase and signified a new reactionary political mobilisation. The Ranveer Sena comprised of predominantly Bhumihar landed gentry but using the bond of caste and the shared social bias against the downtrodden, Ranveer Sena was able to sway large sections of Bhumihar peasantry as well as a section of Rajput landed gentry. The Sena had deep ideological and political linkages with the Sangh Parivar and BJP, apart from enjoying the patronage of Bhumihar-Rajput politicians from across the spectrum of ruling class parties. And their specific objective was to unleash terror, to suppress the growing mobilisation of agricultural labourers and poor peasants on socio-economic issues, and their political assertion, especially under the banner of the CPI(ML) Liberation.
One key context for the rise of the Ranveer Sena – and for the Bathani Tola massacre – was the victory of CPI(ML) in the Assembly seats of Sahar and Sandesh in Bhojpur in 1995. It was this political assertion that was the catalyst for the formation and virulent feudal reaction of the Ranveer Sena. This political victory came as a culmination of the material and political challenges posed by the landless poor (overwhelmingly of oppressed castes) against the feudal hierarchical order of caste and class, and their political representatives.
At Bathani Tola, one woman was gang-raped before being killed. Another’s breasts were chopped off. A baby girl was tossed in the air and slashed with a sword as she fell. One 10-year-old girl’s arms were shopped with a sword. Small boys lost their lives due to terrible sword injuries. Homes where people were sheltering were set on fire. Such acts by the Ranveer Sena appear to have provided a sort of template for some of the horrors of the Gujarat massacre by the Sangh Parivar.
Bathani Tola’s landless poor dalits and minorities were being punished for the temerity of their political and social assertion with the CPI(ML). After Bathani Tola, other large-scale massacres at Laxmanpur Bathe, Shankarbigha, Narayanpur and Miyanpur followed, targeting variously the social base of the CPI(ML), the COC(Party Unity) faction which has now merged with the Maoists, and even poor Yadavs who were the social base of the RJD.In the wake of the massacres at Bathani Tola and Bathe, there was a persistent discourse that ruling class parties, the mainstream media, and even the social democratic Left, sought to peddle. This discourse downplayed the massacres, speaking of them as part of a supposed ‘war of attrition’ or ‘caste war’ between the Naxalites and the Ranveer Sena. The struggles of the poor peasants and labourers for increased wages, land, and dignity were deemed to be a ‘provocation’ – and the Ranveer Sena rationalised as a natural response to such provocation. The CPI(ML) was accused of pitting agricultural labourers against peasants, and the Ranveer Sena posed as the representative of ‘peasants.’ In his press conference following the acquittal, Brahmeshwar Singh has again spoken of how some forces are seeking to break the ‘unity’ of peasants and agricultural labourers.
The myth that the struggle between Ranveer Sena and CPI(ML) was a ‘caste war’ is exposed totally by what a Ranveer Sena sympathiser told the correspondent of The Hindu, after the acquittal. Justifying the massacre as a “reactionary mobilisation” of the upper castes against “those Naxals,” the Ranveer Sena sympathiser declared, “The land is ours. The crops belong to us. They [the labourers] did not want to work, and moreover, hampered our efforts by burning our machines and imposing economic blockades. So, they had it coming.” The very fact that those who had been oppressed for centuries, were having the temerity to organise and assert themselves socially, economically, and politically, was enough to merit being massacred.
A booklet issued by the CPI(ML) (Yeh Jang Zarur Jiten, 2000) pointed out that by calling landlords and even big grain traders ‘peasants,’ and calling for unity of agricultural labourers with these ‘peasants,’ the Ranveer Sena and its apologists, as well as the ruling class parties, were actually rationalising oppressive class and caste hierarchies and atrocities. As long as agricultural labourers were willing to remain subordinate to the landlords, there would be ‘peace’, but as soon as they assert their independent identity and demand rights and dignity, they would be met with the full ferocity of feudal reaction.
The booklet recalled that Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the Kisan Sabha founder whose legacy the Ranveer Sena was trying to appropriate, had written a book called ‘Khet Mazdoor’ (Agricultural Labourer) while in Hazaribagh Jail in 1943. While advising against an agricultural labourers’ organisation separate from the Kisan Sabha, Swami Sahajanand had emphasised that the Kisan Sabha must keep agricultural labourers at its core. In his words, “Agricultural labourers are the soul of agriculture.” Brahmeshwar Singh’s ‘kisans’ (‘peasants’) are those who massacre the ‘soul of agriculture’ – i.e the poor peasant and farm labourer. The Ranveer Sena is nothing but a private army of landlords and big traders: having nothing remotely in common with peasants.
WHAT were the events that led to the Bathani Tola massacre?
Bathani Tola is a dalit hamlet attached to the Badki Khadanv village. There was no immediate wage struggle or economic blockade preceding the massacre. In 1988, agricultural labourers of Bathani Tola had launched a strike for minimum wages, which went on for a long while, until the then DM had intervened and an agreement had been reached between the labourers and landlords.
A young chemical engineer called Mohd. Yunus had defeated an oppressive feudal Mukhiya of Badki Khadanv, and been elected Mukhiya in 1978, supported by dalits and Muslims and a broad unity of rural poor. Ever since, the landlords and feudal forces of Badki Khadanv had sought to victimise the dalit and minority communities. Since then, the landlords had begun encroaching on Karbala (graveyard) land and razed an Imambada to the ground, which had stood on 1 decimal of land owned by the Bihar Government. For years the dalits and minorities had waged a battle in court in order to retrieve Karbala land in Kanpahari and Nawadih villages that had been grabbed by the landlords.
The CPI(ML)’s 1995 victories at the Assembly seats of Sahar and Sandesh were an especially sore point for the feudal forces, which organised themselves as the Ranveer Sena. Since January 1996, the Karbala Mukti Janjagaran Manch led by the CPI(ML) had struggled for the retrieval of the Karbala land. Peaceful protestors returning from a march were attacked by Ranveer Sena brigades – comprising mostly the same assailants who perpetrated the Bathani Tola massacre.
In April 1996, Ranveer Sena goons killed Mohd. Sultan and refused to allow his burial in Badki Khadanv. Nayeemuddin Ansari was among those who led the struggle demanding that Sultan be allowed burial in the Karbala land. Ranveer Sena attacks forced Nayeemuddin and around 58 other poor Muslim families to move from the main village to the dalit hamlet, Bathani Tola.
A vicious communal campaign ensued, targeting Bathani Tola. On 29 April, Ranveer Sena declared that the Muslims of Bathani would not be allowed to read namaz on Bakrid. Though the namaz was read in the presence of the BDO and police, the Ranveer Sena subsequently looted Muslim homes, and these attacks continued daily. The police refused even to file an FIR. On 7 June, the Muslim villagers appealed for protection to the then CM Laloo Prasad in his ‘Janta Durbar’, yet the attacks continued unabated. Ranveer Sena brigades would fire at Bathani villagers on 13 June, 3, 8 and 9 July, and the police station and camps, as well as DM and SP, were duly informed of each attack. Yet no action was taken against the perpetrators.
Delegations of CPI(ML) leaders repeatedly met the DM and SP and warned them that a major Ranveer Sena massacre was in the offing. The authorities were fully aware of the fact that the Ranveer Sena men held a huge gathering at Badki Khadanv, and had amassed weapons. Yet they did not respond to repeated appeals and took no measures to prevent the massacre. And when the actual massacre took place, in broad daylight, the police stayed well away and turned a blind eye. Three police personnel – including the Officer in-charge at Badki Khadanv Police camp, and two choukidars, witnessed the entire carnage passively. Significantly, in the court case, these three deposed as defence witnesses! There can be no more damning proof of the fact that the police and administration in Laloo’s regime had instructions not to discourage the Ranveer Sena in any way.
RIGHT from the start, it was a struggle even for medical care for the survivors, and for an FIR to be lodged. Daily protests swelled in numbers, and the CPI(ML) raised the demand that the DM and SP be penalised for their complicity in the massacre. On July 17, a Sankalp Sabha was held at Bathani Tola, attended by thousands, and addressed by the then CPI(ML) General Secretary Vinod Mishra, MLA and legendary Bhojpur leader Ram Naresh Ram among others.
On July 22, 1996, thousands of people laid siege to the Bihar Assembly. Inside the Assembly, the CPI(ML) legislators had raised their voice – and been marshalled out. CPI(ML) supporters had made it to the state capital, Patna, braving rains and police intimidation and violence all along the way. At R-Block (close to the CM’s residence), Liberation reported that “a pitched battle between the police and the demonstrators ensued for over two hours in which the police resorted to tear gassing, water cannons and lathi charging. Even the Patna City DM, Rajbala Verma and the ADM, Deepti Gaur, were themselves involved in stone pelting. But nothing, not even the gun-wielding policemen, could scare away the demonstrators who had not forgotten that the same police had quietly watched as Ranveer Sena butchered innocent women and children at Bathani Tola. The militant mood of the mass shook up the police as they were seen scurrying into nearby shelters every time the demonstrators moved forward breaking the barricade.” CPI(ML) MLAs Comrades Ram Naresh Ram and Mahendra Singh were both severely injured in the stone-pelting by police.
A contingent of around 50 student and youth activists of AISA and RYA managed to make it to the portico of the Assembly, where they raised slogans, and were then severely lathi-charged by police.
For over a month-and-a-half, senior leaders of the CPI(ML) sat on a fast-unto-death, demanding action against the DM and SP. Com. Rameshwar Prasad began his fast on August 3. He was jailed on the third day itself, and continued the fast for a full month in jail itself. Com. KD Yadav joined him on August 22, and septuagenarian Com.Taqi Rahim also fasted for 7 days, and was also arrested. The fast ended on September 3, achieving a significant victory when Laloo Yadav was forced to announce the transfer of DM and SP of Bhojpur. The BJP, Congress, Samata Party as well as local JD leaders together protested the transfer, calling for a Rasta Roko, Rail Roko, Bandh, etc, but these reactionary attempts failed for lack of mass support.
In 2010, soon after the Ara session court verdict came out, the people of Bathani Tola commemorated the martyrdom day (11 July) of the massacre victims by erecting a memorial. The sculpture by Manoj Pankaj shows the women and children emerging through stone, and in the centre is a child holding a butterfly with a hammer and sickle carved on its wings. The memorial was inaugurated by Comrade Ram Naresh Ram – in what was to be one of his last public appearances before his demise.
AFTER Bathani Tola, the Ranveer Sena was banned – yet the same macabre dance of death watched passively by police and administration, was to unfold again and again. 10 were massacred at Haibaspur (Bikram, in Patna rural district) on 26 March 1997. (Incidentally this was one of the immediate of the Bihar Bandh campaign during which Comrade Chandrashekhar was shot dead by RJD MP Shahabuddin’s men in Siwan on 31 March.)
One of the worst of the massacres was at Batan Bigha, the dalit hamlet of Laxmanpur Bathe. On the night of December 1, 1997, armed cadres of Ranveer Sena crossed the Sone river (that forms the boundary between Bhojpur and Jehanabad (now part of Arwal) districts) and arrived at Laxmanpur-Bathe village. Using swords and guns, they slaughtered 61 people including 27 women, 16 children and one infant). President KR Narayanan called this massacre a ‘national shame.’ But even this did not shame the Laloo Government, which continued to covertly encourage the Ranveer Sena.
JD MP Chandra Deo Verma had called for lifting the ban on the Ranveer Sena. And on 25 January, 1999, the latter massacred 23 at Shankarbigha, in Arwal (Jehanabad); 12 at Narayanpur (Jehanabad) on 10 February 1999; and yet again, on 16 June, 2000, 33 were slaughtered at Miyanpur – this time, most of the victims were poor peasants of the Yadav caste (Laloo’s traditional mass base).
THE tale of how Brahmeshwar Singh ‘mukhiya’, chief of the Ranveer Sena and notorious as the Butcher of Bathani and Bathe, has escaped scot free all these years is a shameful one, implicating two Chief Ministers.
In the wake of Bathani Tola, the police removed the names of Brahmeshwar and his three lieutenants Bhola Singh, Sadhu Rai, and Bhoda Bhatt from the FIR, and in spite of protests being conveyed to the SP, his name was never added to the FIR. In the Bathe FIR too, Brahmeshwar is conspicuously absent. This decision to omit the Ranveer Sena’s top man from the FIRs in the worst-ever massacres perpetrated by this banned outfit, could only have come from the top man in the Government. Even today, Brahmeshwar Singh continues to be a ‘non-FIR accused’ in these cases.
And of course, the Nitish Government took the greatest care to protect Brahmeshwar.
When the Ara court convicted 23 in the Bathani Tola case in May 2010, Brahmeshwar was pronounced an ‘absconder.’ Strangely, though, this ‘absconder’ whom the police failed to find, had already been arrested in 2002, and was inside Ara jail! A Special Public Prosecutor told The Hindu, “It is hard to fathom as to what is preventing the police and the government in bringing to book this criminal, who has been lodged in Ara jail since 2002. This clearly shows that both the police and the government are not interested in ensuring that justice is meted out.”
Soon after the Ara sessions court verdict in the Bathani Tola case, the Additional District and Sessions Court of Patna sentenced 16 Ranveer Sena men to death and 10 to life imprisonment in the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre case. But both verdicts failed to indict Brahmeshwar Singh – and the fate of the Bathani conviction has shown the way for what lies ahead for the Bathe verdict as well.
Responding to the Bathe verdict, Barmeshwar Singh had given the JD(U)-BJP regime his accolade: had a government like Nitish’s been there to guarantee “law and order”, he said, there would have been no need to form the Ranveer Sena.
And in July 2011, Brahmeshwar ‘Mukhiya’ became a free man, since the Bihar Govt didn’t oppose his bail plea!
FOLLOWING the Bathe verdict, Justice (Retd) Amir Das who had headed a Commission of Enquiry set up after the Bathe massacre to identify the political patrons of the Ranveer Sena said, “the masterminds of the Bathe massacre are in power in Bihar today.”
The Ranveer Sena was known to have BJP and Sangh Parivar backing; during the debate in the Bihar Assembly on the Ranveer Sena's Bathani Tola massacre of 1996, then CM Laloo Yadav had placed a leaflet by the Sena calling for votes for BJP candidates. A Central Investigation Team (constituted after the Bathani Tola massacre) found that an RJD MLA from Mokama, Dilip Singh, had supplied sophisticated arms to the Ranveer Sena. In the wake of outraged protests following the Bathe massacre, and widespread allegations of political backing for the Ranveer Sena, the Government headed by Rabri Devi set up the Justice Amir Das Commission to probe the political linkages of the Ranveer Sena.
The Commission complained of non-cooperation even from the RJD Government. In 2006, when the Commission was on the point of preparing its final Report and had requested for a final extension of its tenure, the JD(U)-BJP alliance headed by Nitish Kumar disbanded the Commission in one of its first actions after it came to power.
According to Justice Amir Das, his Report had the evidence to indict 42 political leaders across the political spectrum, mostly from the BJP and JD(U) but also the RJD and Congress; leaders including BJP leaders like the present Deputy CM of Bihar – Sushil Kumar Modi and former Union Minister C P Thakur and former RJD Minister Shivanand Tiwari who is currently the JD(U) spokesperson. In response to a petition by the CPI(ML), the Patna High Court had then ordered that the findings of the Amir Das Commission be made public – an order that has been ignored.
The Nitish Government, in blatant betrayal of his poll promises of land reform and his rhetoric of ‘mahadalits’ and ‘most-backwards’, has essentially remained loyal to the traditional feudal support base of the JD(U)-BJP, and has proved that loyalty by disbanding the Amir Das Commission and jettisoning the recommendations of the Land Reforms Commission set up by his own Government.
In Nitish’s Bihar, 10 mahadalits are sentenced to death for the Amausi massacre (Khagaria district) while perpetrators of feudal atrocities against dalits and the rural poor go scot free. The hatred shown by the police to the poor Muslims at Forbesganj is reminiscent to what was seen at Bathani Tola.
It is ironical that today, the forces which patronised the medieval barbarism and feudal reaction in the form of the Ranveer Sena, are in power, being feted by the corporate media as messiahs of ‘development’ and ‘progress.’ Bathani Tola is a reminder of the real face of the BJP-JD(U) combine, which masquerades behind the talk of mahadalit empowerment and corporate ‘development.’
Calling the bluff of Nitish’s slogan of ‘Nyay ke saath vikas’ (Development with justice), the CPI(ML) will conduct a month-long Nyay Yatra from 22 April. The statewide campaign will link the massacre sites in Shahabad and Magadh region with other sites of feudal-patriarchal violence and state brutality elsewhere in Bihar and seek to bring together all justice-loving people in a shared quest for justice. The CPI(ML) will also challenge the Bihar HC verdict in the Supreme Court, and will seek Supreme Court intervention to ensure justice in the range of Ranveer Sena massacre cases in Bihar.
THE Bihar HC verdict of 16 April, acquitting all Bathani Tola accused, repeatedly holds that the witnesses (survivors) are ‘lying’ and ‘spinning tales’ and being ‘untrustworthy’ and ‘totally unreliable.’
At one point, the verdict observes (see below) that the witnesses claim to have run away and hidden in bushes or ditches. But the IO, according to the verdict, did not find any bushes or ditches. The verdict asks that if we accept that the assailants had come to liquidate everybody, would they not have found and killed these men too?
The verdict implies: since these people are alive, we must assume they are lying about being eyewitnesses.
In other words, the verdict suggests that in any massacre, the only truthful witness can be a dead witness. Dead men and women, (un)fortunately, tell no tales, and cannot give evidence in court.
The ones who survive a carnage alive, according to the verdict, are by definition, dubious and suspicious witnesses, since if they were indeed present to witness the carnage, how come they are alive to tell the tale? Only if they were killed could they have been credible and trustworthy.
Going by this impeccable logic, can anyone ever be convicted for a carnage?
Excerpt from the verdict:
“In the present case, we find it quite conflicting that the allegation and the act are such that the miscreants had come to eliminate everyone in the village. After killing, they set fire to the houses. How could they did not bother to look for people in hiding in close vicinity of the village itself ? The witnesses and the accused are neighbours and of neighbouring Tola. They would not be exposing their identity in broad day light giving people opportunity to identify them. Some prosecution witnesses say they hid in a ditch. IO says no ditch was shown nor was it there which could show a hiding place. Ahar (irrigation channel) is conspicuous place but surprisingly the witnesses hide there and, from time to time, were able to peep out unconcerned of their safety which is quite unnatural. Some witnesses are said to have hidden in bushes like jungle but on objective finding of the IO, there was no such place. People, who were intent to liquidate everybody, naturally would have seen that there were no male members, they would have searched for male members who were all hiding in very close proximity to the village itself. This is unnatural for the prosecution witnesses. Because of these reasons, we have found the identifications made by the prosecution witnesses not worthy of reliance for the purposes of this extreme punishment of either death or life imprisonment.
The verdict does say, “thanks to the investigating agency and the administration the true culprits have escaped.”
But the verdict does not contain a breath of uncertainty about the innocence of the accused who have been named by the eyewitnesses!
Says the verdict, “People suffered, their families obliterated with no solace as to the punishment to the perpetuators. Thanks to the misguided investigation and prosecution.” But the verdict itself seems to wilfully forget that those suffering families are the ones who bore witness. By branding these sufferers and anguished survivors as “witnesses who were totally unreliable”, the verdict has rubbed salt into their wounds, and rendered them terribly vulnerable to retribution from those it set free.
Shockingly, the only three police eyewitnesses to the carnage deposed in Court as defence witnesses! What can be more telling of the biased character of the police investigation, and prosecution? But the HC verdict treats both the prosecution and eyewitnesses as equally malafide, suggesting that both conspired to frame innocents. The witnesses have been spoken of as though they are the ones in the dock.
In fact, the verdict goes to the extent of apologising to three of those accused by eyewitnesses of some of the most heinous crimes – on the claim that they were juveniles at the time of the incident, and yet have spent time in jail and been sentenced to death and life imprisonment.
What will be the impact of such a verdict on the ground in Bathani Tola?
Are the accused who have just been acquitted, being emboldened by the verdict’s implied message: that they are now free to avenge the injustice done to them by the witnesses who helped send them to jail?
(from Liberation January 1998)
THE history of Bihar, for more than two decades, is replete with massacres. Massacres of rural poor of dalit castes by various landlord armies. In their desperate bid to suppress the ever growing rural poor uprising and to hold onto their caste-class privileges, the new classes of landlords and kulaks have frequently took recourse to this terror tactics as a means to terrorise the whole mass of people. Yet the massacre at Laxmanpur-Bathe of Jehanabad on the night of 1 December is a case apart and it rightly shook the conscience of the nation in the 50th year of Indian independence.
In all 61 persons — two thirds of whom were children, women and old persons — were butchered to death in a cold-blooded operation at the dead of night. All the victims belonged to the class of agrarian labourers and were dalits in the social hierarchy. In their struggle for socio-economic emancipation they had taken up the revolutionary banner of the CPI(ML).
The killers were men of the Ranvir Sena — an upper caste landlord army which enjoys the political backing of the BJP as well as support from a section of the RJD.
This time the target chosen was a village in Jehanabad that lies close to the districts of Bhojpur, Patna and Aurangabad. The essential purpose was to send the message across the whole of central Bihar. The time chosen was significant as the political crisis at the centre had matured and a caretaker government was in office. Thus, by effecting an upper caste mobilisation of both Bhumihars and Rajputs, it also symbolised the beginning of the political offensive by arch-reactionary forces. …
… The record was indeed created not only in terms of numbers but also in the measure of brutality and cowardice. Side by side, another record was created by the media, particularly in Bihar, which excelled in hypocrisy. Since day one, Sangh Parivar propaganda machinery swung into action and the media began playing to its tune. A prominent journalist from Patna wrote in a national daily that it was the same old story of clash between Ranvir Sena and Naxalites, the only difference being that this time Naxalites were unarmed. How cleverly the cold-blooded massacre of women and children was rationalised as a routine kind of confrontation! The same journalist in subsequent write-ups tried to rationalise Ranvir Sena as an expression of peasant’s anguish against indiscriminate Naxalite violence. This typical attitude was common to the entire upper caste journalist fraternity barring a few exceptions. The long list of upper caste villages supposedly under the threat of Naxalite revenge were boldly displayed in newspapers and cock-and-bull stories of PWG squads entering into Jehanabad were dished out. The news analysis that began with Laxmanpur-Bathe invariably ended up with concern over general deterioration of law and order and demands for action against Naxalite extremists who dare to run parallel governments and even attack the police. The news of protests were underplayed whereas the fast by BJP leaders and Vajpayee’s visit was overplayed. All this was a well-orchestrated move to divert public attention from Ranvir Sena, from its organic links with the BJP and pressurise the state administration to divert its operations against the victims themselves.
… Still the machinations of the whole range of mercenaries is not the last word in the rural poor’s march to liberty. The protest is growing fast and assuming larger dimensions.
… The massacre has generated immense class hatred among rural poor, strengthened their determination to close their ranks, and led to the growing realisation of going over to offensive actions as the best way of defence.
… With the advent of Ranvir Sena, the class war is no longer confined to this or that region of Central Bihar any more. It is engulfing the entire central Bihar. This has also created conditions for forging a broader class unity, a unity cemented by blood. The class war is also making irrelevant the false god of social justice, Laloo Yadav, who in his earlier incarnation had encouraged the growth of Ranvir Sena as a Machiavellian plot to wipe out our Party. In fact, it has turned into a Frankenstein for him and is threatening his own social base in the changed political environment of BJP’s growing political offensive.
… The challenge of Ranvir Sena, the perpetrators of the ‘national shame’, has to be met. In the concrete context of Bihar, the interests of the revolutionary peasant movement as well as the national responsibility of halting the onslaught of saffron army has merged into one and the same task — wiping out Ranvir Sena.
The rural proletariat has been shedding blood for its socio-economic emancipation and political liberty. It is our duty to organise people to avenge the death of their class brethren and for that we shall have to undertake the widest exposure campaign particularly in view of media hostility; do away with all sectarian attitudes and unite all positive social sections and political forces and raise our preparations to a higher level to deal a crushing blow to this army of butchers, of cowards. This battle can surely be won and must be won. This is the call of human progress, democracy and true nationalism. This is the call of the modern times.
(EXCERPTS from a write-up by Comrade Vinod Mishra which appeared in the September 7, 1996 issue of Mainstream)
… Kanshi Ram as well as Ram Vilas Paswan, the two self-appointed spokesmen of the dalits, didn't feel it necessary to even condemn the incident. VP Singh, the foremost votary of Dalit empowerment maintained a mysterious silence over the entire episode. No Muslim leader worth the name cared to visit the spot despite the fact that the Ranveer Sena is a frontal organisation of the BJP, that a considerable section of the victims belong to the Muslim community, that the immediate issue was the liberation of the Kabristan and Karbala lands and that the massacre had a strong communal overtone.
Indrajit Gupta, the Communist Union Home Minister, did fly to the spot and parroted the hackneyed phrase of lack of land reforms as the root cause of the problem and hence as the Home Minister he can hardly do anything. Gupta flew back to Delhi promising Central funds for the modernisation of the police force in Bihar and for raising new units of para-military forces as demanded by the Chief Minister and the police top- brass. One wonders whether it was really lack of arms which was the cause behind the police inaction! In Parliament, the Union Home Minister announced the formation of a task force comprising retired senior police officials to probe into the causes of the rise of extremism in Bihar. There was no word or action against the district administration for their criminal neglect of duty and even the earlier norm of setting up a judicial enquiry to probe such grave incidents was given a go-by under the cover of generalisations.
Gupta's reference to lack of land reforms as the root cause was much acclaimed by the liberal media as touching the raw nerve of the problem. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that it was the most ridiculous of statements in the concrete context and with regard to its particular timing. One often reads editorials and social analyses that point to the lack of land reforms as the root cause behind the growth of Naxalism. Gupta was obsessed with the same concern and hence handed out the usual recipe. In his misplaced zeal of scholarly adventure he failed to grasp that Bathani Tola was the reverse case of growing feudal backlash.
In Bhojpur in general, and the main village of Barki Kharaon near Bathani Tola in particular, people relying on their organised strength and increasing political might had already snatched reforms over wages and land. The feudal backlash, emboldened by the ascendancy of the BJP in the last parliamentary elections in Bihar, was precisely meant to snatch these gains and re-establish the savarna hegemony. Incidentally, Ranvir was a Bhumihar hero of yesteryear who fought against Rajput domination and, therefore, Rajputs were generally wary of joining the Ranvir Sena. At Barki Kharaon, the unity between the two castes was effected by the BJP elements using the convenient communal pretext as the current struggle there was over Kabristan and Karbala lands which have been forcibly occupied by savarna landlords; the confrontation has its genesis in 1978 itself when Yunus Mian defeated Kesho Singh in the Panchayat elections for the post of mukhiya, and then the subsequent razing to the ground of the Imambara.
Bathani Tola is a typical case of open class war which, though rising at grassroots, is defined by the parameters of political struggle at the top, a typical case where caste as well as communal antagonisms – the two major social parameters of contemporary Indian society – are blended within the framework of class struggle. It is no accident that the revolutionary Left and the communal fascist forces of the extreme Right stand face-to-face in a headlong battle in this class war which has engulfed the entire district of Bhojpur and is fast spreading to other parts of Bihar. Neither is it incidental that with the outbreak of open class war the centrist and social-democratic forces have turned impotent often adopting a neutral position that only goes to benefit the predators.
This class war, which subsumes within itself the issues of caste and communal discriminations, is at the same time the negation of the post-modernist agenda for which the priority is the other way round.
The media cover-up as well as the silence of all the proponents of Dalit and minority empowerment has to be seen against this backdrop.
If the 25 years of the history of Bhojpur is any guide, the struggle has never stopped half-way here. The rural poor, compared to their position 25 years ago, have snatched socio-economic gains and have advanced politically to a considerable extent. No Bathani Tola is going to make them surrender even a small bit of their gains. The battle, therefore, goes on and shall continue till the last vestige of feudalism is ultimately razed to the ground.
(The Hindu, April 25, editorial)
The acquittal of 23 people convicted by a lower court in the gruesome Bathani Tola massacre case is a shocking indictment of the country's criminal justice system. …
Whether the Court was correct in dismissing all the eight private or independent eyewitnesses as unreliable — the conviction by the sessions court was based on the testimony of two of them — is bound to be called into question. Its disbelief that some of these witnesses could have hidden in close proximity to the village and watched the massacre — on the ground that the bloodthirsty mob would have found and liquidated them — is at best a questionable conjecture. What is certain, though, is that justice has been denied and that it will be a travesty if the perpetrators of this massacre are allowed to get away. The Bihar government, which has said it will appeal the judgment, must prepare the strongest possible case. While it is finally up to the courts to decide on guilt and innocence, the tragedy of Bathani Tola exposes the elitist biases of the country's media, which has paid scant attention to this miscarriage of justice. When the combination of a shoddy investigation and hostile witnesses led to all nine accused being acquitted in the high-profile Jessica Lal murder case a few years ago, it was the spirited campaign by the media that resulted in the Delhi High Court taking suo moto notice of the acquittal and reopening the case. It is important that we do not allow our attention to be diverted and justice to be subverted in this case merely because the victims were poor and landless Dalits living in a remote village in the Bihar hinterland.
Deccan Herald April 21, 2012
The quest for justice in a massacre in Bathani Tola village in Bihar in 1996 has suffered a grievous setback with the Patna high court reversing a lower court verdict. The high court has acquitted all 23 people who were convicted by a sessions court earlier.
... Witnesses of the massacre identified the perpetrators. Yet it took the police four years to prepare a chargesheet against the 63 that were named. It took another ten years before the sessions court delivered the verdict. The Patna court’s ruling overturning the earlier judgment means that the 23 will now walk free.... the fact that so many people convicted for one of the worst massacres against Dalits in India’s recent history went free shows how tenuous and tortuous the Dalit quest for justice is.
Bathani Tola was not alone in its suffering or grief. Ranvir Sena, a militia of uppercaste Rajputs and Bhumihar, wreaked havoc in several Dalit and Muslim villages in Bihar in the 1995-2002 period. ... The fact that Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh ‘Mukhiya’ has not been convicted still – he has been acquitted in 16 out of the 22 cases against him and granted bail in six other cases – stands testimony to the influence the Ranvir Sena continues to wield in Bihar.
April 20, 2012, Northern Voices Online
Nayeemuddin living in Arrah, sixty kilometers west of Patna is stunned. Five of his family members were butchered sixteen years back by the dreaded Ranvir Sena. He got to know on Monday that Patna High Court has acquitted all the convicted in this case.
The ‘Shaheed Smarak’ at Bahani Tola reminds that sixteen others were also massacred on that day at the same place by the same killers. But by the ruling of High Court, no one is guilty today. …
Only one political party Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) is visible protesting over this acquittal. It blocked the Ara-Patna road to protest over the investigation process which resulted into the acquittal. Ashok Singh, an official of the CPI (ML) has announced that his party would challenge this verdict in the apex court.
BATHANI TOLA (BHOJPUR), April 19, 2012
It was a July afternoon in 1996, and it took the marauding mobs less than a couple of hours to execute the massacre that took 21 lives. Among the dead were 11 women, six children and three infants.
With that, Bathani Tola, an unsung hamlet in central Bihar, shot to fame as one of the many sites where the fearsome Ranbir Sena had left its bloody mark. Last week, the village was once more in the news, with the Patna High Court acquitting 23 men convicted of the gruesome murders.
Bathani Tola was not the first, and would not be the last, in a series of atrocities committed through the 1980s and 1990s by the Sena, a powerful caste army of Bhumihars and Rajputs. Its victims were always landless labourers (Dalits in most cases), who, though poor and impoverished, had begun to get radicalised in the backdrop of the Naxal movement taking root in the State.
“We heard their howls of agony, but simply could not find the courage to come out,” recounts Naimuddin Ansari, one of the prime witnesses who lost six family members in the carnage. “The Sena men encircled our hovels, drew out the victims and slaughtered them,” recounts Sri Kishun Chaudhary, who lodged an FIR against 33 persons the day after the massacre.
Among those named was Brahmeshwar Singh — the infamous Mukhiya and founder of the Ranbir Sena — who is said to have overseen the Bathani killings as well as the caste massacres that followed in Laxmanpur Bathe and Shankarbigha (81 Dalits were killed in the two villages). Fourteen years after the bloodbath in Bathani, the Ara sessions court sentenced three persons to death and awarded life sentence to another 20.
The acquittal of the same men by the High Court has come as a shock to Bathani's residents. The court might have had its reasons — it cited “defective evidence” — for overturning the convictions, but the villagers are inconsolable and recollect every detail of the horror that visited them, including the fact that the Sena men killed women and children by design, not because they came in their way.
“This government [the Nitish Kumar-led NDA] has sold out to the rich and influential. It is now up to the Party [the Communist Party of India (Marxist -Leninist)] to decide the next course of action,” says Mr. Chaudhary, fatigued and bitter from years of fighting the case.
Naimuddin too looks dejected and defeated. A bangle-seller at the time of the carnage, he lost his three-month-old daughter to the aggressors. She had not even been named, when she was killed, he reminisces, adding, “Baby,” as she was called, “was tossed in the air and thrust down the blade of a sword.”
“My seven-year-old son Saddam saw it. They all saw it,” cries Naimuddin. One half of Saddam's face had been mutilated by sword lacerations when Naimuddin finally reached the spot after the Sena men had dispersed.
“As I picked him up, he [Saddam] said, ‘Abba save my life!' It was then that I realised they had cut his spinal cord.” The child died within a week at the Patna Medical College and Hospital.
A Sena sympathiser, who spoke to this correspondent, justified the “reactionary mobilisation” of the upper castes against “those Naxals.” “The land is ours. The crops belong to us. They [the labourers] did not want to work, and moreover, hampered our efforts by burning our machines and imposing economic blockades. So, they had it coming.” Not surprisingly, there is panic in Bathani over the release of the Sena men. ...
Naimuddin and others have one question for visitors: if those named in the FIR are not the killers, who killed the 21 residents of Bathani Tola?
(Shoumojit Banerjee, The Hindu)
HOWEVER, only by reason that he could not identity some of the accused in dock, the whole statement of Sri Kishun Choudhary cannot be brushed aside...the evidence of this witness (identifying several of the accused, and corroborated by the evidence of other witnesses – ed/-) appears truthful and reliable.
… As such it is obvious that no material and substantial embellishment has been made by ...Radhika Devi in her statement wherein she has given consistent version in regard to the manner of accused Baccha Singh and accused Manoj Singh in which they had dealt with her and the daughter of Naim. Therefore, evidence of Radhika Devi appears truthful and reliable and is accepted. (Radhika Devi, an agricultural labourer, and her mother were working in the fields when they saw the assailants. She testified that she had hidden under a bedstead in Marwari Choudhary’s house, where the assailants broke into the house, dragged out wives of Dimangal and Sri Kishun Choudhary from under the bed and slaughtered them. Radhika and her mother Malti continued to hide under the bed, keeping Naim’s baby daughter with them. Baccha Singh cajoled Radhika out, promising not to kill her. When she came out, she saw Manoj Singh throw the 2 month-old baby of Naim in the air and cut her with a ‘daab’ (sword). Baccha Singh fired at her chest, and when she fell, crushed her fingers with tiles to make sure she was dead. She is one of the key witnesses who identified several of the accused. A doctor of the Sadar Hospital testified to having treated Radhika Devi for a deep wound in her chest and respiratory distress, and that the post-mortem of Naim’s baby revealed injuries and cause of death consistent with Radhika Devi’s eyewitness account of her death. – ed/- )
… the statement of this witness Paltan Ram to the extent that he saw that when his daughter (10-year-old – ed/-) Phool Kumari ran out from the house, accused Ajay Singh fired shot at her and accused Nagendra Singh had fired shot at Ram Ratiya Devi … has emerged intact and unshaken and is well supported and corroborated by Dr Arjun Prasad (the doctor who testified to the post mortem of Phool Kumari and Ram Ratiya Devi – ed/-).
… It is obvious that witness Naimuddin had occasion to see the miscreants from very close distance of 20 to 25 yards. It is also obvious that this witness has given a correct sequence of the occurrence...It is obvious that Naimuddin has made some inconsistent statement in respect of identification of accused persons, but for these reasons alone (his) statement cannot be brushed aside as (it) otherwise appears to be free from any infirmity, improvement and embellishment and well corroborated by (other prosecution witnesses). Therefore the evidence of Naimuddin appears truthful and reliable …
... Prosecution witnesses Imam Hussain @Imamuddin and Radhika Devi have given flawless evidence and so identification done by them appears beyond doubt.
On point of sentence (12.5.2010)... Today an application on behalf of convicted accused Manoj Singh, Bela Singh, Dilip Singh and Santosh Singh to the effect that at the time of the occurrence they were minor as they have disclosed in the statement recorded under section 313 Cr.PC hence application to be kept on record and matter to be heard. On this point … I have found no substance in the claim...as this plea has been taken when the accused persons have been found guilty and the case is fixed for hearing on the point of sentence while prior to it twelve long years has elapsed in trial of the case, but on no point of time this plea has been taken on behalf of these accused persons.
It is obvious that all the accused persons along with their companions had come to Bathani Tola with the sole purpose of committing massacre and so they had killed the children and the women 18 in number ranging from the age of 3 months to 35 years. Therefore in the facts and circumstances of the case as appeared in the evidence of PWs, the present case falls in the category of rarest of the rare case. It is evident that there is specific evidence on record that accused no.1 Ajay Singh had killed 10-year-old girl Phool Kumari, while accused Manoj Singh had killed 3 months old daughter of Naim and accused no 3 Nagendra Singh@ Narendra Singh had killed two women Sanjharo Devi and Ram Ratia Devi besides cutting hands of Phool Kumari, a ten year old girl. Similarly there is specific evidence against the accused Baccha Singh @ Hare Krishna Singh that he had inflicted fire arm injury on the chest of Radhika Devi who survived injuries … In such circumstances accused no. 1-3 namely Ajay Singh, Manoj Singh, and Nagendra Singh @Narendra Singh appears liable to be sentenced with capital punishment...while accused Baccha Singh is sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life under Section 307 IPC and further accused Baccha Singh, Hare Ram Singh, Akshaibar Singh, Kanhaiyya Singh, Dilip Singh, Sanjay Singh, Ashok Singh, Muna Singh, Degree Singh, Santosh Singh, Kamlesh Singh, Subedar Singh, Bela Singh, Madho Maur, Mahendra Maur, Sri Bhagwan Maur, Bharat Maur, Jhaman @ Venkatesh Maur, Ram Pujan Ojha, and Mangal Rai are sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life under Section 302/149 IPC.
Ajay Kumar Srivastava,
Addl. District @ Sessions Judge I,
Bhojpur, Arrah
THIS prime prosecution witness (the IO) has been cross examined at length by defence and interesting facet comes out on this initial aspect of the matter. He admits that in the afternoon of 11.07.1996, he, along with Sadar SDO, was at Narhi village about 6 kilometers from Sahar PS on law and order duty by his jeep. While he was at Narhi village wih Sadar SDO at about 4 pm on 11.07.1996 on his wireless, he received information from Sahar PS about the carnage at Bathani Tola. The wireless message was transmitted to all police officials including senior police officials of the district. He admits that the said information was clearly information about cognizable offence. He admits that there was a police picket of Bihar Military Police established at Barki Kharaon for last 6 to 8 months of which Raghuraj Tiwary (DW 1) was the Incharge. He admits that it was first Raghuraj Tiwary (DW 1) who had sent a written information with Choukidar Nirmal Yadav (DW 2) about the carnage to the Sahar PS on basis of which wireless message was transmitted. He admits that on basis of the said written information, neither any case was registered at PS nor was it preserved nor was the contents thereof mentioned in the case diary nor he had cared to read the same. On receiving the wireless information, he immediately proceeded to Bathani Tola. He first came to Khaira village at about 5 pm where he met Dy SP, Piro, Sub Inspector of Police, Agiaon and armed police group and they all proceeded to Bathani Tola in a tractor inasmuch as because of incessant rain, they could not move in their official jeep. He admits that he reached Bathani Tola at about 5.45 to 6 pm on 11.07.1996.
We then have Nirmal Yadav as DW 2. He was the village Chowkidar of Barki Kharaon. He states that at about 2.30 pm when firing started, Raghuraj Tiwary (DW 1) gave him a written report to be immediately given to Sahar PS. He immediately left for Sahar PS and delivered the same. It may be noticed that it is this message upon receipt whereof from Sahar PS, wireless message was flashed all over the district but neither this message nor the wireless message has been brought on record by the prosecution. He makes one startling revelation. Even though there was hundreds of rounds fired from both sides for over half an hour, not a single cartridge was seized by the police. We may note that no weapons, firearms have been seized and proved to be weapons or arms used in the massacre. Prosecution has failed to explain why these two, i.e, DWs 1 and 2 were not examined as prosecution witness though shown as chargesheet witness. They have failed to explain why the initial report of DW 1 or the wireless message based thereon were never brought on record or proved in Court.
From the above sequence of events coming from the four witnesses aforesaid, it is apparent that the story, as propounded by the prosecution, appears to be far from truth. There was a carnage in which about 20 people lost their lives. They were brutally massacred but what actually happened has not been truthfully and correctly recorded. The information, first received, was never brought by the prosecution to Court. The Fardbayan is obviously some thing prepared much later with clear interpolation with regard to time of its recording.
What were the DM, the SP and other senior officers doing at the site during whole night is not explained. The administration was evacuating injured without recording their statements. The dead bodies were left lying unattended for the whole night without explanation. Though the Fardbayan is said to have been recorded at 4.30 am on 12.07.1996, when was the FIR registered is not known. The FIR is said to have been dispatched to Court on 13.07.1996 but reaches the CJM, Ara only on 14.07.1996.
(Radhika Devi’s) statement first recorded is of some importance because subsequently in Court when she is examined as PW 4, she gives graphic details placing herself inside the house of Marwari Choudary (PW 6) and seeing the slaughtering all around her in the house. For the present, this statement and the injury report would show that she was available to the authorities and the police right through the night but no effort was made to record her statement immediately.
(Dr Rohit Ram Kanojia) has proved some of the injury reports including that of Radhika Devi (PW 4) where he has reserved opinion as to the nature and cause of injury while referring her to PMCH. State has not brought any evidence of treatment or injury report of the said Radhika Devi (PW 4) from PMCH.
Curiously though she (Radhika Devi) was treated at PMCH and discharged from there, not a chit of paper with regard to her treatment or the nature of injury found and treated at PMCH has been brought on record. … Another important thing to be noted is though she alleges that her fingers were crushed to see whether she was alive, none of the injury reports show any injury on the fingers. She admits that there was no charring mark on her blouse though her skin on her chest was burnt by gun fire. ... In our opinion, considering that, how and where she was injured not having been established, her presence in the house of Marwari Choudhary itself being doubted because of her contradictory statements, she is totally unreliable witness.
(The IO) admits that on the place of occurrence, he did not find any jungle, bushes or ditches which have obvious reference to the various hiding places witnesses have disclosed. So much for investigation of such a carnage is the deposition on behalf of prosecution.
Upon analysis of this deposition of the IO (PW 13), though the carnage stands established, it is crystal clear that information of cognizable offence written and oral were received by the police right from 4.30 pm on the date of occurrence itself but all those were kept out of record. Police personnel, high officials of the Government had reached the place of occurrence within about four hours but no statements were being recorded till the Fardbayan of the informant next morning giving enough time to the people to meet, discuss, plan out the story. Defence has rightly argued that prosecution has deliberately concealed the first information allowing time for story to be built up which discredits the correctness of the involvement of the appellants. Why this concealment was done is not explained.
All we can say in this regard is that the prosecution was being given time to come up with story as the earliest versions were some how not palatable. The Court would, in such circumstances, not only reject the accusation but would draw adverse inference also in relation to the investigation.
At this stage, it may be pertinent to point out that so many people were killed, hundreds of rounds of gunshot fired but not a single cartridge shell seized. Even the licensed rifles and guns seized from the alleged accused were never tested for their use. Accused persons were all arrested as virtually sitting ducks from their houses or from a lodge. These are serious matters especially when we see how mercilessly people were killed. All we can say is thanks to the investigating agency and the administration the true culprits have escaped gauntlet.
Now we may come to the three defence witnesses. We may notice that all these defence witnesses were in fact cited in the chargesheet as prosecution witnesses. They were important witnesses but without any explanation, prosecution failed to examine them. Raghuraj Tiwary, the Officer-in-charge, Police Camp at Barki Kharaon has been examined as DW 1. Nirmal Choudhary, the village Chaukidar of Barki Kharaon has been examined as DW 2 and Sheonath Yadav as DW 3 who was also a village Chaukidar. They were the first persons to witness the occurrence and gave report thereof.
Each of these juveniles (Manoj Singh, Dilip Singh, Bela Singh, who had been convicted by the trial Court – ed/-) in conflict with law has spent a long time in prison contrary to law because of insensitivity of the trial Judge on this issue. We, on our part, could only express regret and apology on behalf of this institution for this serious lapse.
We must first record that considering the nature and the manner in which the offence is said to have been committed of which we have no doubt and which has virtually not been challenged by the defence, the extreme punishment of death for the barbaric act was fully called for but the question is who perpetuated (sic) the crime.
Reliance was placed by the prosecution on the evidence of Radhika Devi (PW 4) said to be an injured witness who was allegedly in the house of Marwari Choudhary (PW 6) and saw a good part of the barbaric incident where, in the house itself, about 18 people including infants of the age of three months were slaughtered. We have noted her evidence and once again we would reiterate that she has rendered herself totally unreliable by her shifting stands. She virtually feigned ignorance to her statement recorded at PMCH which is Exhibit A at 10.30 am on 12.07.1996. In her statement (Exhibit A), she does not even mention that she was in the house of Marwari Choudhary (PW 6) which she later claims in her deposition. She is contradicted by the IO (PW 13) in his cross-examination on this issue. She claims to have received a bullet injury on her chest fired from 3 feet away. Her fingers crushed. She survived to see the entire episode in the house but unfortunately her injury report and her treatment at PMCH were never brought on record to establish the alleged injuries. The informant in the Court does not name her as one of the injured persons whom he saw in the house of Marwari Choudhary (PW 6) when he returned to the house. For these reasons, we have declined to rely upon her evidence.
In the present case, we find it quite conflicting that the allegation and the act are such that the miscreants had come to eliminate everyone in the village. After killing, they set fire to the houses. How could they did not bother to look for people in hiding in close vicinity of the village itself ? The witnesses and the accused are neighbours and of neighbouring Tola. They would not be exposing their identity in broad day light giving people opportunity to identify them. Some prosecution witnesses say they hid in a ditch. IO (PW 13) says no ditch was shown nor was it there which could show a hiding place. ...Some witnesses are said to have hidden in bushes like jungle but on objective finding of the IO (PW 13), there was no such place. People, who were intent to liquidate everybody, naturally would have seen that there were no male members, they would have searched for male members who were all hiding in very close proximity to the village itself. This is unnatural for the prosecution witnesses. Because of these reasons, we have found the identifications made by the prosecution witnesses not worthy of reliance for the purposes of this extreme punishment of either death or life imprisonment.
The prosecution was unable to explain why the first written statement of the incident sent by DW 1, Incharge of the police picket at Barki Kharaon, was not registered as an FIR and not even brought on record rather DW 1 was immediately suspended. The defence has submitted, with some vehemence, that this written statement was an unpalatable truth for the administration/prosecution.
Thus, having considered the entire material, we regret that though such a ghastly incident took place where over 20 people, only one of them being a man, were brutally slaughtered, infant of three months not left alive, the investigation was not fair in respect of the persons who perpetuated this ghastly crime. Apparently, investigation was directed in a particular direction far from truth and not above suspicion. Truth was deliberately suppressed by the investigating agency and the prosecution, only to project an involvement of the accused persons, examined witnesses who were totally unreliable. Unfortunately, in this exercise, who actually perpetuated the crime, got away with it. People suffered, their families obliterated with no solace as to the punishment to the perpetuators. Thanks to the misguided investigation and prosecution. We say no more.
Justice Navneeti Prasad Singh
Ashwani Kumar Singh
