Video Source: Video Volunteers
Thumbnai: Sanjay and Devakabai Khobragade’s house. The couple was sleeping just below the portraits of Buddha and Dr. Ambedkar in the open verandah.
Source: Nilesh Kumar for RoundTableIndia
“Gondia police in 2014 arrested Devakabai a 48 yr old Dalit woman in the murder of her husband Sanjay Khobragade. When produced in court she said she had been tortured in custody & forced to confess killing him.
Her husband, Ambedkarite activist Sanjay Khobragade had been set ablaze while he was sleeping. In his dying testimony he named 6 murderers whom he had heard that night. They belonged to the dominant Powar caste.
There had been an ongoing conflict between the Powars & Khobragade to build a Buddha Vihar for the Dalits of the village. They had previously allegedly burnt down his house after an argument about the same.
The police dismissed his testimony & instead claimed that Devakabai was having an affair with their neighbour (also Dalit) and that they killed her husband after being ‘caught’ in a ‘compromising position’ ”
On May 16, 2014, 50-year-old Dalit activist Sanjay Khobragade was doused with kerosene and set ablaze as he was sleeping in his courtyard in the Kawalewada village in Gondia, Maharashtra, allegedly by six Powar men and women. What followed was a victim blaming campaign against his wife, Devakabai.
During the five consequent days while Khobragade battled for his life, he gave three separate statements 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, his wife and village sarpanch Madhuri Tembhare, 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 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 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, was the same person as the deputy Sarpanch, Shriprakash Rahangdale. Their demands were dodged for years, but the trust members had finally relented, and asked Khobragade to meet them after May 16 giving the excuse of Lok Sabha election results.
It was on that night 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 he named them in his last statements before he died, his accusation counts as a dying declaration, admissible as evidence in court. However, the police rejected and dismissed it as only a ‘suspicion’ and later claimed that Khobragade was in a drunken state and hence his statement was unreliable. The six accused were arrested initially after his death, but were soon released on bail, followed by the arrest of Khobragade’s wife Devakabai and their neighbour, Raju Gadpayle, a Dalit rickshaw-puller, who was also involved in the demand for the Buddha Vihar with Sanjay Khobragade.
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, his house had been burnt down after an argument regarding the same, and 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, and that they conspired to kill Khobragade after he saw them 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.
They spent four months in jail before being released on bail on August 23, 2014, but Devakabai is still awaiting justice. 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, intimidate her into not seeking justice for her husband, and implicating another Dalit man in the crime.
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://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7552:caste-atrocity-in-gondia-a-report&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132
