Scores guilty of Dalit rape and torture
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.
Vachathi is close to Sathyamangalam forest which was the hunting ground of sandalwood smuggler and elephant poacher Veerappan.
On June 20, 1992, police and forest department officials raided Vachathi 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.
Many villagers were taken into custody and some of the women were raped, the CBI said.
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.