http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-south-asia-15106778
India abuse: Scores guilty of Dalit rape and torture
29 September 11 17:37 GMT
The rape victims
A court in southern India has convicted 269 police and forest
officials of torturing and abusing more than 100 low-caste Dalits
during a raid in 1992.
Officials went to the village of Vachathi in Tamil Nadu state looking
for smuggled sandalwood.
Over two days, 18 women were raped, more than 100 Dalits were abused
and their homes and cattle looted.
Seventeen officials were found guilty of rape and the rest were
convicted of "atrocities against Dalits".
Nearly 100 of those convicted are policemen. Of the 269 convicted, 54
died during the course of the trial.
The court has sentenced all of those convicted: 12 men were given 10
years in prison and five were given seven years each. The remainder
were given jail terms of between two and five years.
"This is an historic judgement. All the accused in this case are
government officials. Till date I don't think so many government
officials are convicted in a single case," said P Shanmugam, president
of the Tamil Nadu Tribal People's Association.
'Repeatedly raped'
All of the low caste tribal rape victims have waived their right to
anonymity. One of them, Gandhimathi, told the BBC that she would like
to have seen life terms for those who committed the rapes.
She said that she and 17 other women were taken in a police truck to a
lake embankment of and repeatedly raped.
"Afterwards they took us to a forest department and tortured us for
the whole night. They took us in groups and photographed us in front
of sandlewood and later produced [the pictures] before the magistrate,
who remanded us for 45 days in jail.
"The officials warned us that if we made any complaints about the
rapes to the magistrate our male relatives will be arrested under a
draconian law. So we kept quiet."
Ms Gandhimathi said that after the crime, government officials killed
all their livestock and took whatever they had.
"When we came back from jail, the whole village was deserted," she said.
"All our homes were destroyed. They killed our animals for food and
dumped the leftovers in our wells. As a result all the water was
contaminated."
Vachathi is close to Sathyamangalam forest which was the hunting
ground of sandalwood smuggler and elephant poacher Veerappan.
Police and forest department officials raided the village on 20 June
1992, following reports that the villagers were involved in sandalwood
smuggling, the BBC Tamil's TN Gopalan reports from Madras (Chennai).
The team was made up of 155 forest officials, 108 policemen and six
officials of the revenue department.
India's Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI] says they ran amok,
thrashing men, women and children, and demolishing huts.
Officials initially denied any wrongdoing and took a long time to
register a case.
It was handed over to the CBI following campaigns by civil society
activists and left-wing political parties, our correspondent says.
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