People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 20
May 20, 2012
|
Vol. XXXVI
No. 20 May 20, 2012 |
Shocking
Verdict in
Gruesome Massacre Case
THE
recent judgement
regarding 16 years old Bathani Tola massacre in Bihar has come
as a rude shock to
the people, as the Patna High Court has exonerated all the
accused in the
absence of foolproof evidence against them. Yet the court did
comment that the
investigating agency did not do its job properly and hence the
court had no
other option but to release them. It is to be noted here that
the lower court
had awarded death sentences for three of the accused and life
term for 20
others.
It was
16 years ago, July
16, 1996, that the Ranbeer Sena, an illegal paramilitary army
of landlords of
Bhojpur district, enacted mayhem in Bathani Tola and killed 11
women, seven
children and two infants, along with mass rapes and chopping
of young women’s
breasts. The hapless people belonged to the poorest minority,
dalit and
mahadalit communities. Despite the widespread outrage and
protests against this
dance of death, however, such incidents went on multiplying.
Massacres at Bathe,
Shankarpur, Mianpur and Narayanpur tell their own tales of
brutality.
Later
on the Ranbeer Sena
chief Brahmeswar Singh, the main brain behind the series of
massacres in which
hundreds of dalits, minorities and mahadalits were done to
death, got all support
from different bourgeois-landlord parties during his legal
fight --- right from
the lower court to the High Court. Many such incidents have
come to the fore
where the murderers were being protected by the bigwigs of the
ruling NDA.
Te Left
parties have
reacted angrily against the class-caste bias of the ruling NDA
and the failure
of the judiciary to impart justice to the most vulnerable
sections of society.
They are pressing for the demand that the case against Bathani
Tola accused must
be pursued in the apex court and that they should not be given
any room to
escape.
The
Left parties met at
