On May 16, 2014, 50-year-old Dalit activist Sanjay Khobragade was sleeping in his courtyard in the Kawalewada village in Gondia, Maharashtra. While he was sleeping, he was doused with kerosene and set ablaze by six Powar men and women. What followed was a victim blaming campaign against Khobragade’s wife, Devakabai, in an attempt to absolve the perpetrators.
Sanjay Khobragade battled for his life for five days after the incident, eventually succumbing to his injuries. During that time, he provided three separate statement to the village tehsildar as well as the police, accusing 6 people belonging to the dominant Powar caste of setting him ablaze. They were Rushipal Tembhare, Madhuri Tembhare who was the village sarpanch and Rushipal’s wife, Bhaulal Harinkhede, Punaji Thakre, Hemant Thakre, and Shriprakash Rahangdale, the deputy sarpanch. The village had 1,500 Powar families as opposed to only 40 Dalit families, and the Powars commanded political influence.
The Powars killed Sanjay Khobragade for asserting his identity as a Dalit, as an Ambdekarite, and a Buddhist. The local governing body, known as the Panchayati Samiti, had in the past allowed three temples to be built for the Hindus of the village on Panchayat land. Hence, the Dalits of the village had been demanding that the Panchayati Samiti make land available to build a Buddha Vihar or Buddhist temple as well. Khobragade had been one of the prominent voices in this fight, and had been demanding that the Panchayat provide a part of the land owned by the Bahyababa Temple Trust to be allotted for building the Buddha Vihar. Notably, the President of the Temple Trust, Shriprakash Rahangdale, was also the deputy Sarpanch. The demands of the Dalits were dodged for years, but the trust members finally relented. The trust members asked Khobragade to meet them after May 16, delaying the meeting by citing the Lok Sabha election results as an excuse.
It was on the night of May 16, that the six accused tried to murder Khobragade. He had heard their voices distinctly before he was set ablaze. According to his statement, they said, “In our village, Mahars don’t raise their voice. How can this bloody outsider come into our town and tell us what to do? Burn him and erase all his traces”.
Since Khobragade named the people that inflicted violence on him in the statements before he died, his accusation counts as a dying declaration. Dying declarations are admissible as evidence in court. However, the police rejected and dismissed Khobragade’s statement as only a ‘suspicion’. The police later claimed that Khobragade was inebriated and therefore, his statement was unreliable. The six accused were arrested initially after his death, but were soon released on bail. The release of the accused was followed by the arrest of Khobragade’s wife Devakabai and their neighbour, Raju Gadpayle, a Dalit rickshaw-puller.
The police ignored the fact that there had been an on-going conflict between Khobragade and the accused about the Buddha Vihar. Shortly after Ambedkar Jayanti in 2012, Khobragade’s house had been burnt down after an argument regarding the Buddha Vihar. Khobragade had filed over six police complaints against the accused over the years. Instead, the police blamed Devakabai, claiming that she had an affair with Raju Gadpayle. The police claimed that Devakabai and Raju Gadpayley conspired to kill Khobragade after Khobragade saw Devakabai and Raju Gadpayle in a compromising position. Both Devakabai and Gadpayle were tortured in custody and coerced into giving a confession for a crime they had not committed.
Devakabai and Gadpayle spent four months in jail before being released on bail on August 23, 2014. However, the Powar murderers were never convicted. Victim blame was used to malign the character of a Dalit woman in order to dilute and divert the caste-based nature of the violence and intimidate her into not seeking justice for her husband.
References:
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dalit-activists-murder-police-reject-dying-declaration-villagers-say-will-fight-till-the-end/lite/#aoh=15595647214039&_ct=1559564726768&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/hathras-lawyers-activists-explain-how-blame-is-shifted-to-victim-s-family-in-caste-crimes_in_5f7f3d4cc5b6da9ba1ee0995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-qyx5udGWE
https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/ringing-with-hate/article7297948.ece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI1t-WR6Lyc
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/163321838/
http://sanhati.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Fact-Finding-Report-Gondia.pdf
https://www.change.org/p/my-mother-didn-t-kill-my-father-dc-amit-saini-investigate-the-murder-of-dalit-rights-activist-sanjay-khobragade
https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/caste-atrocity-in-gondia-a-report/
