Khairlanji verdict: Accused escape death for dalit killings
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COMMENTS 
The Central Bureau of Investigation had pleaded for the death penalty for all the accused in the Khairlanji killings case. But the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court held that the case did not fall in the ‘rarest of rare’ category
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has commuted the death sentences of six people accused in the massacre of a dalit family in Khairlanji in 2006, and has instead sentenced them to 25 years’ life imprisonment each.
The much-awaited verdict was given by a division bench comprising Justices A P Lawande and R C Chauhan that turned down a plea by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) challenging the lower court’s ruling of life sentences for two of the eight accused, while sentencing six people to death.
The CBI had pleaded for the death penalty for all the accused. It also asked the high court to charge them under the stringent SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1987. Ruling that the case did not fall in the ‘rarest of rare’ category, the division bench awarded all eight accused with 25 years’ imprisonment.
Three other accused were let off due to lack of evidence.
The police arrested 47 people during the investigation into the incident. The probe was later handed over to the CBI, which filed a chargesheet only against 11 people.
Defence lawyer Neeraj Khandewale, who represented all the accused members of the Dhande clan in the high court, contended that “the prosecution case was full of loopholes based on lies, false witnesses and fabricated evidence”.
In what has become known as the Khairlanji massacre, a dalit family was lynched by members of a higher caste in the small village of Khairlanji, in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district, on September 29, 2006. Surekha Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, 44, her sons Roshan, 23, Sudhir, 21, and daughter Priyanka, 18, were dragged out of their house, assaulted brutally, paraded naked in the village, and then hacked to death.
Bhaiyyalal, who had gone to work in the fields, witnessed the incident whilst hiding in a nearby hut. He managed to escape. Shortly after the verdict, he told the media: “I have not been given justice in the tragic matter.”
Human rights and media reports allege that the women were gangraped although this has not been noted in the police or CBI investigations. There are also allegations that the local police shielded the perpetrators in the ongoing investigation.
A government report on the killings, prepared by the social justice department and YASHADA -- the Pune-based state academy of developmental administration -- has implicated top police officers, doctors and even a Congress member of the legislative assembly in an alleged cover-up.
Source: IANS, July 14, 2010
http://ibnlive.in.com, July 2010
http://www.mynews.in , July 2010