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Fleeting victory, constant fear-Santosh Singh
-The Indian Express

Nagri, Bhojpur: Residents of Nagri in Bihar’s Bhojpur had spent 12 years waiting for justice after the killing of 10 people, nine of them of scheduled castes and OBCs and one a Muslim, during a caste attack on May 11, 1998. And after they felt justice had finally come, it proved short-lived.

“First, we had to wait 12 years before the lower court finally handed the death sentence to three people and life to eight,” says Nagri sarpanch Shiv Kumar Ram, a key witness. “Now the high court has changed the verdict.”

A division bench of the Patna High Court on March 1 acquitted all 11 convicted for lack of evidence. So far, there has been no sign of any government plans to appeal in the Supreme Court. That decision will have to factor in the caste-sensitive nature of the region. After the acquittal, shots were fired in the air near the site of the killing, presumably by members of the upper castes celebrating the verdict. District SP M R Naik said the police would seek details of every licence-holder among the upper castes in Nagri.

Bhojpur has been on alert in any case since last June’s killing of Barmeshwar Mukhiya, chief of the disbanded Ranbir Sena, leading to attacks on police vehicles.

The Nagri acquittals are the second similar verdict in a year. Last April, the high court had acquitted 23 people for the 1996 massacre of 22 Dalits in Bathanitola. On that occasion, the government did seek a review in the Supreme Court. The district had seen 25 massacres between 1977 and 2000, with 139 members of scheduled castes and OBCs killed.

At Nagri, 90 km from Patna, sarpanch Ram reflects on the 1998 killings. It was a moonlit night, he recalls, and the market was powered by a generator installed at the flour mill of Umashankar Singh, who later became the complainant.

“We could recognise the faces of the attackers who were chanting, ‘Ranbir Baba Jindabad’,” Ram says. “They attacked the crowded market and killed 10 people including Muslim shopkeeper Gaffar Mian.” The other victims were Vijay Chaurasia and his sons Ayodhya and Amarnath, Ramashish Ram, Vashistha Sah, Sudarshan Paswan, Lal Babu Paswan, Vimlesh Pande and Sunil Yadav.

Nagri has 1,000 families, most of them of scheduled castes, yet they say they have been suppressed by the 50-odd upper-caste, bhumihar households. “They have over a dozen licensed weapons while our community has only one,” Ram says. “They destroyed the gram kachahari in 2009 and fired in the air to intimidate us. The acquittal has now emboldened them.”

The sarpanch says he has escaped several attempts on his life since he became a witness, while the complainant says he has escaped five such attempts in 10 years. Umashankar Singh has stopped going to Nagri and rented out his house.

Singh, who lost his brother Sunil Yadav in the massacre, and others who lost various relatives have got grade-4 job in the health department. “I have now lost all hope of justice,” says Singh, who lives in Ara town. So does the Chaurasia family.

The families of the other victims remain at Nagri under the shadow of fear. Some of them still work in the farms of upper-caste landlords or till fields as sharecroppers.

Lal Babu Paswan’s wife Savitri Kuwar has got a job in Jagdishpur, with which she supports her three sons besides occasionally helping the family of her husband’s brother. Her sister-in-law Lalmuni Devi says, “We just make ends meet. We take any petty job that comes our way.” Their tiled house has two rooms and a small open courtyard. Lalmuni Devi has given up on treatment of her four-year-old grandson, who suffers from a neurological disorder, because the family cannot afford it. “We heard about a court verdict and have lost hope,” she says. “We want to live in peace because we cannot fight big people.”

Rambha Kumari, 15 now and a toddler when her father Sudarshan Paswan was killed, suffers from a mental disorder. Paswan’s mother Dulari Devi says, “My daughter-in-law Urmila has got a job at Char Pokri and earns the family’s bread.” Dulari does not know about the court verdict.

Altaz Ali, son of the Muslim victim, says, “My father was a tailor and ran an egg shop in the market. I got a job after his killing and now support a family of 14 with a meagre income.” About the recent acquittals, he says, “Such a verdict will further embolden the perpetrators.”

The Bhojpur police have re-established a picket at Nagri. “We cannot take any chances. The picket will remain as log as there is tension,” says Naik, the SP. “We are also trying to identify the people who fired to celebrate the acquittal. It amounts to provocation.”

Defence lawyer Purushottam Lal, happy with the verdict, said it followed after the high court had gone into all the evidence on which the trial court had convicted the 11. “It was not convinced and acquitted them,” he says. “It is up to the state government if it will seek a review in the Supreme Court.”