In a disappointing judgment, the Andhra Pradesh High Court on 21st April, 2014 has set aside an order of a special court that sentenced 21 people to life imprisonment and 35 others to one year in jail for the ghastly massacre of Dalits in Guntur district in 1991. The Court struck down the sentence for “lack of evidence”.
It was on 6th August, 1991 that the upper caste members had brutally hacked eight Dalits to death and injured many more in the Tsundur village of Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. Besides, houses of Dalits were looted and set afire and many families were forced to flee Tsundur and adjoining villages. Historical and structural reasons played a major role in upper castes attacking the Dalits of Tsundur. In Tsundur, the social and economic mobility of Dalits was detested by upper castes. Exppansion of literacy, entry into public employment, bargaining for higher wages and greater political assertion in local bodies rendered the Dalits relatively less dependent on the upper caste groups and, therefore, less vulnerable to their domination and manipulation. The impact of this assertion of Dalits could also be noticed from the fact that just before the attacks, the upper caste groups had imposed a boycott of Dalit workers from cultivating their fields or even entering their areas.
The incident also brought to light the connivance of local police officials with the attackers. Besides the abuses by landowners and armed upper caste groups, the problem in most of such cases gets compounded by the connivance of local police as well as lax prosecution. It is mainly due to lax prosecution that, in the recent past, several acquittals have come from High Courts in cases involving massacres of Dalits. In Bihar, in the last one and a half years, the Patna High Court has given acquittals in Laxmanpur-Bathe, Bathani Tola, Nagri Bazar and Miyanpur massacres of Dalits. If justice inordinately delayed was not enough, there is now a clear indication of denial of justice in all such cases. In all such acquittals, including the one in Tsundur massacre, the state government must necessarily and urgently file an appeal in the Supreme Court.
Massacres like in Tsundur show that any attempt at successfully challenging the historically oppressive socio-economic structures and greater political assertion by Dalits does not go down well with upper caste groups that derive their socio-economic power from the same oppressive structures. This situation calls for a combined struggle on the legal front as well as bringing about a change in land relations (mainly through land reforms) and a proactive welfare state. Only such a combination of struggles will ensure that there are no more travesties of justice and a more egalitarian socio-economic structure prevails.