Patna HC acquits 13 in Senari massacre case

CHINTA DEVI

WAS THE COMPLAINANT IN THE CASE. SHE DIED IN 2011.

PATNA: The Patna high court on Friday acquitted all 13 people convicted in the infamous Senari massacre case in which 34 dominant caste members were killed allegedly by cadres of the banned Maoist Communist Centre in 1999 at the end of a bloody decade marked by caste wars in Bihar.

The high court set aside the guilty verdict by a lower court. Senari village, in Jehanabad district at the time of the incident, now falls in Arwal.

A division bench of justices Ashwini Kumar Singh and Arvind Srivastava ruled that the prosecution witnesses “are not reliable” and the appellants deserved to be given the benefit of the doubt.

“The acquitted persons should be released forthwith if they were not wanted in any other case,” it said.

Defence counsel Sanjay Kumar argued that the prosecution had failed to prove the participation of the appellants in the crime with credible evidence.

Altogether, 23 witnesses and five doctors who conducted autopsies on the deceased recorded their statements before the court.

“On appreciation of evidence adduced during trial, the court finds that there is a real and reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the appellants. Accordingly, the impugned judgment of conviction and order of sentences are, hereby, set aside,” the bench said.

Earlier, on November 18, 2016, the Jehanabad district court had sentenced 10 persons to death and awarded life imprisonment to three others. The district court had acquitted 23 others for lack of evidence.

Those awarded the death penalty were Bacchesh Singh, Buddhan Yadav, Butai Yadav, Satendra Das, Lallan Pasi, Dwarika Paswan, Kariban Paswan, Godai Paswan, Uma Paswan and Gopal Paswan.

On the evening of March 18, 1999, alleged members of the Maoist organisation forced 34 people to line up near a temple at Senari village and killed them by slitting their throats and shooting them.

Chinta Devi, whose husband Awadh Kishore Sharma and son Madhukar alias Jhabbu were among those massacred, was the complainant in the case. She died in 2011.

Officials in the home department said the Senari incident, one of the last in a series of casterelated massacres at the time, was believed to have been in retaliation to the LakshmanBathe massacre in which 58 Dalits were killed in 1997.

The massacre had drawn international attention. The bodies were lifted for last rites by kin only after the arrival of then Union ministers George Fernandes, Nitish Kumar and Yashwant Sinha.

Sanjay Sharma and Rakesh Sharma, eyewitnesses of the incident, said the village could have been chosen as a target because of poor access to it. The village has around 300 houses.

Police were deployed at Senari after the court order to prevent any untoward incident.