[Reader-list] patna high court acqits all the bathanitola accused

[Asit Das]

dear comrades this has come as another shock after last years highcourt
judgement on bathani tola this should be seen in the recent back ground of
 gang rape and murder of dalit girl students in haryana the mediaval
barbarism continues so there is is n urgency of vigorous protests on this
by the radical left and radical ambedkerite organisations there is a
serious need of creating a principled joint front of radical left, radical
ambedkerites and revolutionary feminists to carry on a sustaned campaign
and protest against atrocities on dalits and sexual violence on dalit women
asit

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/patna-high-court-acquits-all-26-accused-in-laxmanpur-bathe-massacre-case/article5218083.ece



Patna High Court acquits all 26 accused in Laxmanpur Bathe massacre case

Rahi Gaikwad



Setting aside the conviction by the lower court, the Patna High Court
on Wednesday acquitted all the 26 accused in the 1997 Laxmanpur Bathe
massacre in Bihar, in which 58 Dalits were killed allegedly by members
of the Ranvir Sena, a militia of upper caste Bhumihar landlords.



A division bench comprising Justices V N Sinha and A K Lal ruled that
the prosecution witnesses “are not reliable” and “the appellants
deserve grant of benefit of doubt, which is, accordingly, granted.”



The court ordered the acquitted persons “to be released forthwith if
not wanted in any other case.”



On April 7, 2010, Vijay Prakash Mishra, additional district and
sessions judge, Patna, had given the death sentence to 16 convicts and
life to 10 others. There were a total of 45 accused at the trial stage
of which 19 were acquitted. The accused persons had gone in appeal
before the High Court.



On July 26, 2013, the division bench had reserved their order on the
criminal appeals of the 26 convicts.



“There are 91 witnesses in the case. My main contention was that the
FIR has names of people who were not seen at the time of the
occurrence of the attack. The police had gone to the village, but no
one gave any names. The government prepared a list of forward caste
names and supplied them later,” defence counsel Kanhaiya Prasad Singh,
representing the accused on death sentence, told The Hindu.



Coming 16 years after the massacre, the verdict is a big blow to the
prosecution’s case. “We will examine what went wrong and then decide
if we want to go in appeal,” Director General of Police Abhayanand
told The Hindu.



“The acquittals are shameful and amount to a massacre of justice,”
Deepankar Bhattacharya, party general secretary of the Communist Party
of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation said in a statement. “Chief
Minister Nitish Kumar has to answer about his promise to give justice
to the victims of massacres. Former president President KR Narayanan
had termed the Bathe massacre ‘a national shame’. The verdict is
another instance of a series of acquittals in other massacres at
Bathani tola, Nagri, Mianpur, Narayanpur and Khagdi-Bigha,” he said.



He demanded a special investigation team to be set up under the
supervision of the Supreme Court to guarantee justice to massacre
victims.



The Laxmanpur Bathe massacre occurred under the Mehandia police
station in the erstwhile Arwal subdivision, now in Jehanabad district,
on the night of December 1, 1997. It is one of most brutal of the
series of massacres in Bihar’s bloody history of caste oppression.
Among the 58 deceased victims were 27 women and 16 children.



This is the third instance of acquittals in a massacre case after the
Bathani tola and Nagari Bazaar acquittals in July 2012 and March 2013
respectively.