Twenty years ago, a party of Tamil Nadu
police and forest officials tore apart the small hill village of Vachathi in a
rampage, but for the villagers the day is still with them even though they have
got justice of a sort.
***
Vachathi is a
name that has a certain resonance as a place of infamy, but 20 years ago it was
just another tribal village in the hills of Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district.
No one living there was aware that its anonymity was about to end in the worst
possible way. Indeed, 20 years ago, Perumal, then 50, must have considered
himself blessed by the gods. Such was his popularity that villagers thought of
him as their oor gounder (village
chieftain) even though his tenure had run its course. Two decades ago, he did
not consider the Forest Department and the police as public enemies, a mistake
that cost him heavily.
On June 20,
1992, 269 government officials, comprising 155 forest department officers, 108
policemen and six revenue officials reached Vachathi, which lies at the foot of
the Sitheri hills. Perumal’s village, home to 2000 Malayalis or the hill
people, a Scheduled Tribe, had little inkling of the horrors to unfold. A man
of upright posture and plain talk, he asks: “I was not a criminal. So why
should I have run?” It was close to 4 pm, the village drenched in a dusty
golden yellow by a westering sun. The forest officials and police had been in
the village for over an hour and had set in motion the events that would form
the premise of the Vachathi case.
The Forest
Protection Squad, led by then Assistant Conservator of Forests T Singaravelu
had conducted a raid in the morning to recover “smuggled sandalwood” buried in
Vachathi’s fields, and had thrashed Chinnaperumal, a farmer working in his
field. He was accused of helping the smugglers by burying sandalwood in the
bed of the Varattar river. Chinnaperumal claimed innocence, but was subjected
to brutal assault. A scuffle followed when the villagers questioned the Forest
Protection Squad and one of the team members, Forester R Selvaraj, was injured.
He was given first aid, and was taken to hospital in a bullock cart arranged by
the villagers. When the squad returned in the evening, most men of the village,
knowing what lay in store for them, had already fled to the Sitheri hills.
Those who had not, those who were working in the fields—mostly mango, turmeric
and maize—and those who were returning home from nearby villages or pastures
where they had gone to herd their goats, were dragged and assembled under the
giant banyan tree that overlooks the shrine of Mariyamamman. Women and
children were abused and beaten with sticks. The temple was vandalised, huts
razed, cattle and goats butchered. The meat was dined upon, and the carcasses
dumped in the community wells. The officers then cut loose and threw whatever
they could lay their hands on--bicycles, pump sets, vessels, and grinding
stones-- into the wells.
Then, 18 women,
many of them minors—the youngest 13—were dragged into a lorry. It stopped at a
nearby, near-dry lake. Here the women were gangraped. Muthamma, Perumal’s
niece, was one of them. Like the other battered women of Vachathi, the events
of that day still play in her mind, like an endless loop tape. “They kept
yelling abuse, calling us sluts and whores. In between, they also mockingly
asked us to show them the buried sandalwood. Then they raped each of us many
times, and made us urinate in front of them. Some of them were children, 13 or
14, including my sister Manikyam. And after everything, they threw us back in
the lorry and took us back to the banyan tree like cattle.”
Around 6 pm, 120
villagers, mostly women and children, were taken under custody to Harur forest
office. Two hours earlier, Vachathi had been a bustling village. Now just a
senile 80-year-old woman and two dogs remained. More humiliation followed in
the forest office. The women were made to stand in three lines. Those in the
first two lines were given brooms and sticks to thrash Perumal, stripped to the
waist. He had already been tortured. (Kuppam, Perumal’s wife, was in the third
row, and therefore spared.) Some women said no, and paid with a severe beating.
“We had no choice but to beat up our beloved Oor Gounder,” says Manikyam. “Once
he was on the floor, they asked us to abuse him and strip him of his trousers.
We refused to do that, and told them to do anything to us. Then they beat us up
again, and kept on asking us to abuse our Oor Gounder.”
Perumal, during
his time as the village chieftain, had lodged a complaint against forest
officials for abetting sandalwood smuggling, rampant in the Eighties and early
Nineties. (The Sitheri hills were one of the richest sandalwood zones in south
India during the period. But by the mid-Nineties sandalwood had disappeared;
not even a stump remains now.) His complaint, according to Perumal, triggered
the raid of June 20. “When we were living in the forests,” says Perumal, “not a
single sandalwood tree was cut. For us, sandalwood is a sacred tree. The
villagers never thought of sandalwood as a money-making option. Things started
going wrong only when the Forest Department started taking control of the
forests.” The sandalwood mafia, according to Perumal, was run by a nexus of
politicians and wealthy businessmen with the help of the Forest Deparment. “The
officers were making a lot of money and feared that my complaint might land
them in trouble. Due to its geographic peculiarities, Vachathi was a strategic
point in the route of the smugglers. And so they turned the tables and accused
us of involvement in sandalwood smuggling. Had we been smugglers, imagine how
rich we would have been. And if we had been that rich, would they have dared to
act like this?” Perumal doesn’t deny that the villagers cut trees, but insists
that those involved were forced by the forest officials to work for them. “Only
those living here can do all that work, and they were exploited for that. For a
day’s work, they would be paid at best Rs. 30.”
In the forest
office, the torture continued late into the night: Many women were raped again.
Kanakam, one of the 18 women who later lodged a complaint against the
officials, says: “After making us beat up our Oor Gounder, they raped us again.
We were asked to strip each other and were made again to urinate in front of
the officials.” The next day, the raiding party went back to the village, and
said it recovered 40 tonnes of buried sandalwood. Huts and houses that had
escaped their wrath the previous day, were looted again. Men like Ramaswami,
who had fled to the hills the day before, watched the destruction of the
village helplessly. “It is easy to say we were cowards. But what chance did we
have of resisting them?”
After two
months, the villagers were released from Salem Central Prison. The raiding
party had slapped three Scheduled Timber Offences Report (STOR) cases against
76 women and 15 men. On a complaint lodge by Singaravelu, another case was
filed under Sections 147[rioting], 148, 332[causing hurt to a public servant to
deter him from doing his duty], 307[attempt to murder], 325, 324, 323[punishment
for causing hurt] and 506 [criminal intimidation] of the Indian Penal Code,
read with Section 25 (1)(a) of the Indian Arms Act against 14 villagers. All
those implicated in the STOR cases were also remanded in this case. They were
released on bail on August 27, 1992.
Nineteen
years later, on September 29, 2011, Dharmapuri Principal District and Sessions
Judge S Kumaraguru convicted all the 215 surviving accused (54 were dead), in
the Vachathi case. The judge sentenced them to terms ranging from 1 to 10 years
rigorous imprisonment. Seventeen were convicted on charges of rape of (IPC
Section 376) ‘‘adivasi” women. (These are their names: Arunachalam, Arumugam, Rajagopal,
Periyanayagam, Rajamanickam, Govindan, Rathinavelu, Pachiyappan, Vediyappan,
Chidambaram, Perumal, Palani, M Perumal, Azhagiri, Madhaiyan, Kaliyappan and
Janakiraman.) They were sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment and slapped
a fine of Rs. 2,000.
The judge also ordered a compensation of Rs. 15,000 each to the 18 rape victims
from the fine amount after the appeal period ends. Of these 17, 12 also got 10
years RI for offences under Sections 3(2)(v) of the Schduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of atrocities) Act. Among the guilty are four
Indian Forest Service officers. The first accused, M Harikrishnan, former
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, got a three-year prison term under
Section 201 of the IPC (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false
information to screen the offender) and another three years of rigorous
imprisonment, and fined `1,000 under Section 3(2)(1) of the SC/ST Act.
Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests P Muthaiyan was sentenced to
a year under Section 342 of the IPC (wrongful confinement). The other two
sentenced to jail are S Balaji, Chief Conservator of Forests, and L. Nathan,
Conservator of Forests. The Madras High Court, on October 11 last year, ordered
suspension of the sentence against Harikrishnan and Balaji.
The judge said
the sentences would run concurrently. He also asked police to take the 17 into
custody. They were taken to Salem Central Prison. The remaining accused were
convicted for various other charges and were awarded imprisonment ranging from
one to three years. Everyone from Vachathi was outside the court to hear the
verdict. Though delayed, the eventual deliverance of justice would trigger
frenzied celebrations.
***
The
road to justice was long and perilous. In July 1992, the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association
heard of the inciden, and a team comprising Basha John, president of the
association, P Shanmugam, general secretary, and M Annamalai, CPI(M) leader and
twice MLA from Harur constituency, visited the area on July 14. Those who had
fled had remained in the hills, traumatised and unable to muster the courage to
come down to the village.
Before they
could even start a legal battle, the Tribals Association had to rehabilitate
the villagers psychologically. That proved to be the greater of the challenges.
According to Shanmugham, the villagers were so scarred that they refused to
come down to the village. “They had nothing left in the village. Everything
they had built and amassed had been destroyed. And they feared that if they
came down they would be killed. The real difficulty was in persuading the
villagers of the need to fight back. And also to convince them that they are
not alone in the fight.” Over the days and months, the delegation won the trust
of the villagers. The team then met the District Collector and submitted a
memorandum. It sought the intervention of then (and now) chief minister
Jayalalithaa. A Nallasivam, secretary of the state committee of the CPI(M) and
Rajya Sabha member, submitted a memorandum to her on July 18 demanding a judicial
inquiry and relief for the victims.
The government
till then had been in denial. Then Forest Minister K A Sengottaiyan backed his
department and accused the villagers of being habitual criminals and abetting
the sandalwood mafia. He claimed that the forest officials had seized smuggled
sandalwood worth `1.5 crore during the raid on Vachathi. Bizarrely, he even
claimed that Vachathi was an inaccessible village situated at high altitude.
***
Meanwhile,
B Bamathi, Director for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Government of
India visited the village for three days from August 6, 1992 and submitted a
report. It detailed the atrocities committed by officials and stated that the
district collector, superintendent of police and the revenue divisional officer
had not even visited the village, despite having received representations. The
report prima facie confirmed that the tribals had been victimised and could not
be called sandalwood brokers, on account of poverty.
The turning
point was when the 18 women who were raped and abused, decided to file a
complaint. On August 22, when they went to the Harur police station, the
sub-inspector refused to register the case. Making matters worse was the report
filed by the revenue divisional officer which stated that the allegations of
rape couldn’t be believed. The officer’s report charged the villagers with
deliberately damaging houses and the property to cook up a case against the
Forest Department and the police. By now the women had decided to fight till
the end. Paranthayi, now a 50-year-old woman whom the women of Vachathi
consider their voice, says: “The men had snubbed us by running away. But we
decided to fight the legal battle. We know what it means to come out in the
open as victims of rape. But the larger question of justice was more important
to us.”
According to
Shanmugham, had it not been for the women, the struggle for justice would have
petered out much earlier. “When the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association and the CPI
(M) decided to take up the issue, we knew that without the village’s
participation, the struggle would reach nowhere. And the women were at the
forefront. They never lost belief despite repeated setbacks and severe
hostility from the authorities. They were repeatedly threatened by police if
they did not relent. But they didn’t relent.”
On their part,
the village swore loyalty to the CPI (M). It has been a bastion of the party
since 1992 with no other party having any significant presence. (In fact, such
is the influence wielded by the party that most villagers speak about the
incident only if it allows them to do so.)
As the struggle started
to gain voice, A Nallasivam filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking
a probe and compensation for the victims, which was referred to the Madras High
Court. In September 1992, the High Court asked the state to provide immediate
relief, restore drinking water and power supply, ration cards and to repair the
houses. Fifteen new houses were constructed under a Government Group Housing
Scheme. The scars would remain forever, but the village was starting to breathe
again.
In 1995, the
High Court rejected the stand of the Superintendent of Police that police could
not register a case against its officers. The court held that police were
duty-bound to register the complaint under Sec 154 Indian Penal Code. In a
significant directive, it directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to
investigate and file a report. The state government’s appeals to the Division
Bench and the Supreme Court were rejected. The CBI investigation, led by DSP S
Jagannathan, would run into head winds. When, for instance, an identification
parade of 1,500 men was arranged inside Salem Central Prison, the procedure was
repeatedly stalled by the local administration. The High Court intervened again
and identification of the accused took place over several days under the direct
supervision of the District Judge and the Inspector General of Police.
Eventually, a chargesheet was filed on April 23, 1996.
The
Tribals Association filed another writ petition in the High Court in 2002 seeking
constitution of a special court and interim relief. In 2007, the High Court
rejected government objections that the victims could not be identified. Under
the court’s orders, the victims ultimately received a total of `1.25 crore as
interim relief. The accused placed several roadblocks for the Sessions Court in
conducting the trial on the ground that the criminal case lodged against the
villagers also should be tried together. The High Court saw through this and
separated the two cases and issued a direction for speedy disposal of the case
against state officials.
***
Though the
Forest Department concedes that its officials were involved in ransacking the
village, they dismiss allegations of rape as baseless, and accuse the CPI(M) of
using rape charges to gloss over the real issue, the villagers’ involvement in
sandalwood smuggling. In fact, K Selvaraj, the Divisional Forest Officer of
Harur range, says the villagers are habitual criminals who to this day continue
to be involved in smuggling forest goods. “The CPI(M) is using these villagers
to gain political mileage. Allegations of rape are the easiest means to achieve
that. They have diverted attention from the real problem.” The direct
consequence of the Vachathi incident, according to Selvaraj, is that forest
officials have become reluctant to take hard decisions. “If the state does not
protect us when we are carrying out our duty, how can we take the necessary
steps required to prevent smuggling of forest goods?”
For most
officials, the stigma of being rapists makes Harur an unpopular job
destination. Dismissing the claims of rape as baseless in a blog post titled
“True Incident of Vachathi Raid,” an anonymous forest official who prefers to
call himself a Dedicated Forest Officer, argues:
“The allegation of rape is not true.
1.
The Revenue
Divisional Officer Dharmapuri under the direction of the Collector has
conducted a detailed enquiry regarding this alleged incident and sent an
elaborate report to the Collector on 10-08-92 and the gist of his report (is)
as follows: He has stated that rape matter came to notice only after 15 days of
the incident. During his enquiry first they told 3 ladies and then 15 and then
23 were raped. He also stated that during recovery of sandalwood 15 lady
constables were with the party and search had not taken place in night time.
There is no chance of rape in the presence of lady constables. Rape matter was
projected by anti-social elements to divert the attention from sandalwood
smuggling.
2.
Barathi Welfare Narpani Mandram Nambipatty,
under the President ship of Murugesan with nine other members have visited the
Vachathi village on 21-07-92 and conducted a detailed enquiry, which revealed
that rape incident had not at all taken place as alleged in news papers. They
have passed a resolution and submitted to the Collector and to other agencies.
3.
President,
Secretary and 8 others of the Nehru Yuva Kendra, Harur have conducted a
detailed enquiry on 03-08-92, with the villagers of Vachathi and others living
near by about the rape incident. No one came forward to say anything about rape
to anyone of their members spread all over the village. They have also stated
that sandalwood smugglers are behind the villagers and twisted the entire issue
of sandalwood theft in to sensational issue of rape to escape from the clutches
of forest department. The President had requested to trace out all sandalwood
culprits and take action.
4.
A representation
alleging rape by forest officers was submitted by the villagers to the All
India Democratic Women’s Association and it was referred to the Director of
Welfare of SC/ST, Chennai for enquiry. The Director visited the village some
time in August 1992 and conducted discreet enquiry and sent reply to the All
India Democratic Women’s Association in the following words. “Considering
the fact that almost one and half months has passed. When the allegation of
rape was brought in to the notice it is not possible to come to any certain
conclusion on the alleged rapes of Vachathi tribal women by forest officials.
5.
Raid was
conducted on 20-06-92. But rape complaint was lodged to the police department
on 22-08-92. They have lodged complaint after a delay of 61 days. The abnormal
delay in reporting the sensational matter has to be viewed seriously. In the
FIR they have mentioned that the rape had taken place in the Forest Range
office, Harur. Subsequently they have changed the place of rape to Vachathi
lake area which is 17 km from the first scene of occurrence.
6.
There were no
reports of rape against women of the Vachathi village for several weeks
following the seizure of sandalwood. Some of the women who later alleged that
offences against them had taken place were remanded to judicial custody for
theft of sandal wood a day after the raid. They did not then complain of rape
to the Magistrate concerned and to jail authorities.”
G R Swaminathan,
a senior lawyer at the Madurai bench of the High Court of Madras, and a member
of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties who visited the village on a
fact-finding mission soon after the incident, too thinks that the judgment is a
“gross miscarriage of justice” and says he does not remember a single villager
testifying to rape. He further states that the villagers had at the time
estimated the raiding party to be of 50 members and that to therefore punish
all the 269 accused was unacceptable. To
all such allegations that the charges of rape are cooked up, Paranthayi retorts
with fury and despair. “Every time they come up with these allegations, it is
as if we are being raped again and again.”
***
Though
the court ruled in their favour, the villagers don’t feel the fight is over
yet. “The village is yet to move on,” says Perumal. “It takes only one day to
destroy a village, but rebuilding it takes many generations.” The sentiment is shared by P Dillibabu,
twice-elected CPI(M) MLA from Harur. “For 20 years, everything in the village
was based around the case. It is about time other things like development were
given top priority. It is not going to be easy, especially with governments,
irrespective of political party, choosing to ignore the problems of the tribal
population of the state.”
Most villagers
still work the fields. Some go to Kerala and find temporary jobs as
construction labourers. The temple of Mariyamman has been reconstructed, and in
the evenings people assemble under the banyan tree and discuss their future,
dreaming occasionally of a permanent departure from their past. Young men who
had dreamt of bigger things 20 years ago sometimes ponder how different life
would have been if June 20, 1992, was erased from their personal histories.
They want better infrastructure, a hospital being the immediate priority.
As
for the women, the custom of marrying from the extended family, they say, made
it somewhat easier to continue with normal life. “It was impossible for us to
get married with someone from outside the village. Not that we did not have
dreams,” says Kokila, one of the rape victims. Their lives, she says, have been
an unending extension of the events of that fateful day. “Ever since that day,
we have been going to police stations and courts every month. Maybe it’s a
little bit easier for the men to move on, but the women live with that violence
every day.”
The younger
generation is keen on moving away from the village and finding a home
elsewhere. Choosing to embrace education as the tool for liberation, they
centre their life on clearing PSC and UPSC exams and finding a way out of
Vachathi. Flex boards of young men who have found government jobs are common in
the village. But as Kumar, a 22-year old graduate working with the Tamil Nadu
police as a constable, would testify, the events of June 20 will forever follow
people from Vachathi. During the interview for SI selection, he was asked to
explain his position on the Vachathi case: Did he consider the police guilty?
Kumar, who says he trembles in fear every time he has to wield a lathi, could
only reply: “I don’t remember, Sir.”
(The names
of rape victims have been changed)
Post Script
THE ONLY PARTY
The most
significant political consequence of the Vachathi case has been the rise of the
CPI(M) in the village. Almost non-existent in Vachathi before 1992, the CPI(M)
now has political monopoly in the village. From 1992, no other party has won
from the constituency of Harur in the State Assembly elections.
According to the villagers, their
rehabilitation would never have taken place had it not been for the presence of
CPI(M). “No one else came to the hills. They convinced us that we have to fight
back. If they had not come, we would have died there in the hills,” says
Ramaswami. The women are even more vociferous in their support of the party.
“Who was there for us?” asks Paranthayi. “Even our men had run away. Who would
have fought our cases? Who would have brought us justice? We will remain loyal
to the party till we die.” In practical terms, the loyalty Paranthayi refers to
translates into a steadfast adherence to the norms laid down by the party.
Hardly anyone in the village speaks up about the case unless they (or the
enquirer) have the party’s authorisation.
Unfortunately,
though not entirely unexpectedly, the modus operandi of the party in the
village has been to carry out its operations without giving agency to the
tribals and the rape victims. It is a case exemplified by Mayilamma, one of the
rape victims who stood against the CPI(M). She still considers herself a CPI(M)
worker, but thinks that the people now running the show are betraying the
party. “Yes, it’s true that it was the party who helped us to rebuild our
lives. They fought our cases too. Back then, we had more involvement. Our
voices were heard. But later, the party started giving orders which we were
meant to obey. We were always treated as victims with no voice of our own.
Otherwise why are there no leaders from the women of this village?”
According to
Mayilamma, she was asked initially by the party to stand as their candidate.
But she alleges that the party, bribed by the family of the present panchayat
president, later abandoned her. She had to spend around `10 lakhs for the
elections, for which her family had to mortgage her land. Vachathi is a
panchayat reserved for women, but the women are usually dummy candidates with
their husbands wielding the power. According to Subrahmanyan, Mayilamma’s
husband, he had to spend two hundred rupees per vote. “That is the usual
practice here. Maybe the CPI(M) might have paid the voters more.”
Now,
Mayilamma lives as an outcast in the village with the villagers accusing her of
being a traitor. “How can she,” asks Paranthayi, “even think of standing against
the party? Who is running the case for her?”Mayilamma, though, perceives
Paranthayi’s retorts as threats. She wonders if she will now be denied justice
just because she stood against the CPI(M).
VACHATHI CASE: TIMELINE
June 20, 1992: A team of 155 forest department officers, 108
policemen and six revenue officials raids the village of Vachathi for
recovering the ‘buried sandalwood’ in the village. The village is vandalised
and eighteen women are raped.
June 21, 1992: The raiding party claims they recovered 40 tonnes
of buried sandalwood from the village.
July 14, 1992: A team comprising Basha John, president of the
Tribals Association; P Shanmugam, general secretary; and M. Annamalai, CPI(M)
leader, visits the area.
July 18, 1992: A Nallasivam, secretary of the State committee of
the CPI(M) and Rajya Sabha member, submits a memorandum to the then Chief
Minister J Jayalalithaa on July 18, demanding a judicial inquiry and seeking
immediate relief for the victims.
August 22, 1992 : Eighteen women
lodge a complaint of rape against the raiding party at the Harur police
station. The Sub Inspector refuses to charge the case.
1995: The
High Court orders a CBI investigation.
April 23, 1996: CBI files a charge sheet holding all 269 members
of the raiding party as accused.
2002: The
Tamil Nadu Tribals Association files another writ petition in the High Court
seeking constitution of a Special Court and for payment of interim relief.
2007: The
High Court rejects the objections raised by the government that the victims
could not be identified. Under Court’s orders, the victims ultimately receive a
total of `1.25 crore as interim relief.
September 29, 2012: Dharmapuri Principal District and Sessions Judge S
Kumaraguru convicts all the 215 surviving accused persons (54 of the accused
had already died), who were involved in the Vachathi case. The judge imposed
sentences ranging from 1 to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
***
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