The UP court awarded death sentence to 3 convicts after a 44-year long trial.
Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh: A special court in Mainpuri district on Tuesday (March 18) sentenced three men to death for the cold-blooded murder of 24 Dalit individuals, including women and children, in what has come to be known as the Dihuli massacre.
“It is a crime which falls in the category of destroying the social structure,” observed special judge Indira Singh while sentencing the three surviving accused.
The court also observed that none of the convicted people showed any form of remorse for their actions and instead displayed pride and arrogance, highlighting the “deep-rooted caste prejudice” by the dominant Thakurs against the Dalit Jatavs.
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Dihuli Massacre: The Day of the ‘Dance of Death’
On November 18, 1981, a group of nearly 20 armed assailants, dressed in fake police uniforms and armed with rifles and guns, stormed the Jatav (Dalit) colony in Dihuli village, under Jasrana police station in Firozabad.
Led by two Thakur youths, namely Radheshyam Singh (Radhey) and Santosh Singh (Santosha), the gang moved in without a warning from the nearby fields. Then began a series of gruesome acts of violence. Over the next four hours, they systematically hunted out and killed every Jatav in sight.
Some Jatavs escaped death. One boy was hidden in a cupboard by his mother, while another mother, who was killed, threw two infants on the roof of their huts. Two young Jatav men burrowed themselves deep into haystacks.
Most of the men in the armed group belonged to the dominant Thakur caste.
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By the time gunfire stopped, 23 dead bodies of Jatavs lay around the basti. Another victim later succumbed to his injuries, bringing the death toll to 24. Six people, including two female infants, were also injured during the shooting.
What triggered the series of murders? The Radhey-Santosha gang was infamous for looting travellers and committing occasional murders, but they were never named in a police file. Until one day, a Jatav tipped off the police.
According to the case details, 15 months before the massacre, two Thakur men had been arrested with weapons during an encounter with police. Four Dalit men had stood as witnesses to the case. The dominant Thakurs wanted to take revenge for the same and teach the Jatavs a lesson and to spread “panic, terror and fear” in their minds, as the court later observed.
Notably, the assailants did not attempt to flee from the village after the murders. Instead, they visited homes of some local Thakurs in the same village to have a hearty meal. They spent the night in the village’s Radhakrishna temple till the next morning.
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“Rarest of the Rare” Crime: The Court Judgement
The court found Rampal Singh, Ram Sewak, and Kaptan Singh guilty of criminal conspiracy and mass murder of 24 Dalits in Dehuli village (now a part of Firozabad).
Out of the 17 accused persons that went to trial in the case, 13 died before the completion of the case while one person was absconding. Judge Singh observed that the Thakurs considered the Dalit Jatavs “socially despicable and inferior” and committed the massacre as part of a planned conspiracy.
Describing the “cold-blooded murder” as a “rarest of the rare” crime, the court highlighted that the men did not stop even when the women pleaded with them to spare their children. “…these people did not show any mercy to anyone, whether it was a man, a woman, minors or children,” said Judge Singh.
Addressing the caste-based superiority the convicts displayed, the court added, “In the year 1981, when scientific advancements in the form of computers and genetics were taking place in the world, some people were stuck with the ingrained and archaic belief that they are superior only because they were born in a particular caste and therefore no one has the right to go against them. This mindset has remained in the modern era that individuals can despise the dignity of others born in so-called ‘lower’ castes without any adverse consequences,” as quoted by The Wire.
