[Reader-list] petition on laxmanpur bathe

[Asit Das]

1. Petition:

(http://www.change.org/laxmanpurbathe)

2. Article on Laxmanpur Bathe
http://cpimlliberation.wordpress.com/

3. Short documentary on the Bathani Tola massacre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12tiKnma57M


_____________

Nobody Killed the 58 People
Who Died in Laxmanpur Bathe
on 1 December 1997

Predictably enough, the Patna High Court has acquitted all the 26
persons convicted by the trial court in the Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre
case. This is the fourth successive instance of wholesale acquittal of
convicts by the Patna High Court in cases of massacre of the oppressed
rural poor in Bihar. Once again eye witness accounts have been dismissed as
being not fully credible and convicts granted acquittal on ‘benefit
of doubt’. The judges could not however disprove the fact that 58 people
had been killed and post-mortems done, and hence they asked the trial
court to calculate the compensation payable to the nearest kin of the
victims as per relevant provisions the Motor Vehicles Act on the basis
of the minimum wage prevalent in the area at the time of the massacre.
They of course did not forget to add that any ex gratia paid after the
massacre should be deducted from the amount of compensation!
When the trial court verdicts had been announced in 2010, Nitish
Kumar was quick to showcase them as the sure signs of justice for the
oppressed poor who had experienced a series of massacres during the
reign of Lalu Prasad. Never mind if he had disbanded the Amir Das
commission to save the political patrons of the Ranvir Sena from being
exposed and punished, at least the perpetrators were being brought to
justice. And over a period of 18 months the script has been thoroughly
reversed by the High Court. The myth of ‘development with justice’
stands brutally shattered.
The acquittals amount to nothing short of a judicial scam. How on
earth can it be possible that the very evidence which the trial courts
found sound enough to hand out convictions has become dubious and
unreliable in the judicial lens used by the High Court? Are we to
believe that trial courts in Bihar do not bother about the nature and
quality of evidence? If that is so, then the judiciary has collapsed in
Bihar and it is time to reinvent it. And let us not forget that the same
High Court has never granted any benefit of doubt to the oppressed poor and
their political representatives to annul their convictions, it is
only those who have been found guilty of slaughtering the rural poor by
the dozen who are being let off through the ‘benefit of doubt’ argument.
While the perpetrators of Bathanitola and Bathe walk free, Bodhan Sada
and a dozen other people belonging to the Mahadalit Musahar community
languish in jail having been falsely implicated and convicted in the
Amausi massacre case.
The massacres perpetrated by the Ranveer Sena in Bihar were not
isolated events, they were episodes of a bloody war that the Sena waged
with complete impunity on the oppressed rural poor in Bihar to crush
their fight for freedom, dignity and democracy. The Sena had openly and
arrogantly declared that the communist movement had no right to exist in
Bihar and that the people must not look beyond the feudal order. Yet
the self-styled champions of ‘social justice’ or ‘development with
justice’ always made common cause with the Sena. Despite the anti-BJP
bravado of the RJD and JDU, the policy of appeasement of Ranveer Sena
pursued by both Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar made sure that the BJP kept
growing in Bihar. And if one ever needed a proof about the organic
relationship between the Ranveer Sena and the RSS-BJP, one only needs to
remember how BJP leader Giriraj Singh described the Sena supremo after
his assassination: he called him the Gandhi of Bihar.
The judicial issues that have been thrown up by the Patna HC
acquittals can only be resolved by the Supreme Court. President KR
Narayanan had termed the Bathe massacre as a matter of national shame.
What has happened now is even more shameful. There is a growing opinion
that the apex court must constitute a Special Investigation Team under
its own supervision and re-examine all the massacre cases in which the
guilty have been let off. But the battle for justice for Bathanitola and
Bathe is clearly much bigger than the question of righting a judicial
wrong. It is about checking the feudal-communal marauders who have been
strengthened by the politics of appeasement and impunity and now feel
emboldened by such shameful judicial acquiescence. This is a battle that
concerns not just the oppressed poor of Bihar but whoever cares about
the future of India, a battle that we must win.
Protests Against Bathe Massacre Acquittal
At Patna, the CPI(ML) staged a protest march from the Gandhi Maidan
to the Buddha Smriti Park on Thursday in protest against the acquittal
of all the 26 people accused of massacring 58 dalits in Laxmanpur-Baathe
village in 1997.
"An SIT should be set up by the Supreme Court to investigate the
matter if justice has to be done to the carnage victims," said CPI(ML)
general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya who led the march, christened
‘Aakrosh march’, in the state capital.
Bhattacharya said President Pranab Mukherjee ought to meet the
massacre victims during his visit to Bihar later this month. "We would
move the apex court against the Patna high court verdict," Bhattacharya
said.
Terming the chief minister Nitish Kumar’s claims that his government
was for ‘development with justice’ as a farce, Bhattacharya said Kumar
would have to answer about his tall promises to deliver justice to the
victims of massacres at Baathe and other places. Several members of the
civil society, including N K Choudhary, Bharti S Kumar, Santosh Kumar
and P N P Lal, also participated in the protest march.
As the protestors began the march demanding the formation of a
Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the carnage, traffic was
disrupted at several places in the city. Protests were also held in
district HQ towns. Protesters also disrupted traffic on the
Patna-Aurangabad NH 98 and the Gaya-Patna road at Jehanabad on Thursday.
In Delhi, the CPI(ML) held a protest demonstration against the
acquittal. The protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar, raising slogans
against the ‘massacre of justice’ and the Nitish Kumar Government for
its betrayal of the promise of justice for victims of the dalit
massacres. Protesters burnt the effigy of Nitish Kumar and a copy of the
Bihar HC verdict too.
Addressing the protest demonstration, CPI(ML) State Secretary Sanjay
Sharma asked, “On December 1, 1997, a feudal landlords’ private army the
Ranveer Sena massacred 58 Dalits, including 27 women and 10 children,
in Laxmanpur Bathe in Arwal, Bihar. Does the HC want us to believe that
‘noone killed these 58 people’? Does the HC hold that the dalit
eyewitnesses can’t be believed? Or do the lives of dalits have no
judicial value?”
AISA’s National President Sandeep Singh said that in repeated cases,
the Bihar HC had overturned lower court convictions in the Bathani Tola,
Nagari and Bathe massacre cases. In the Bathani case, the HC declared
any true witnesses of the massacre could only be dead. But in the Bathe
case, the court held that the eyewitnesses were genuine, yet chose to
disbelieve their identification of the killers on the technicality that
the actual names were added to the FIR a few days after the massacre.
The HC, like in the Bathani case, has again held in the Bathe case that
the IO and the prosecution have been biased and have weakened the case.
But this bias can only be corrected by placing faith in the eyewitnesses
who testified at risk to their lives. The HC has insulted the survivors by
letting loose the killers – once again putting the eyewitnesses at
risk.
Human rights activist Mahtab Alam deplored the Patna High Court verdict and
said that struggle for justice must go on.
Aslam Khan, Vice President, Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA)
said that Dalit landless poor who assserted themselves politically by
supporting the CPI(ML) were massacred by Ranveer Sena in Laloo’s Bihar,
and now justice is being repeatedly massacred in Nitish’s Bihar,
exposing the cruel truth behind his claims of ‘justice for mahadalits.’
AISA Delhi President Sunny Kumar said that the first thing that
Nitish Kumar did on assuming power was to abandon the Amir Das
Commission set up to probe the political links with the Ranveer Sena,
because it was well known that BJP and JDU leaders formed the bulk of
political support for the Sena, while some RJD and Congress leaders too
were known to support the Sena.
JNUSU General Secretary Sandip Saurabh reminded that when Ranveer
Sena chief Brahmeshwar was killed recently, the Ranveers unleashed
violence on dalit hostel students in Ara – even as Nitish’s police took a
leaf from Modi’s book and let them ‘vent their rage’.
Santosh Roy, CPI(ML) State Committee member, said that Rahul Gandhi
speaks of Dalits moving ahead powered by ‘Jupiter’s velocity’ – but he’s
silent on the Bathe verdict. Meanwhile Congress, earlier partner of
Laloo who presided over the massacres, now cosies up to Nitish Kumar,
who presides over the massacre of justice! And on Independence Day this
year, the Baddi dalit atrocity took place in Bihar, reminding everyone
that Bathani and Bathe are not horrors of the past, but terrors of today in
Nitish-ruled Bihar.
Many concerned citizens and AISA activists also demonstrated at Bihar
Bhavan on the same day.