Khairlanji massacre

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On 29 September 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family belonging to a Scheduled caste were murdered in a small village called Kherlanji in Maharashtra. The women of the family, Surekha and Priyanka, were paraded naked in public before being murdered. Enraged by a police complaint lodged the previous day by Surekha over a land dispute, the accused dragged out Surekha Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange and two of her sons and daughter, paraded naked in the village and then hacked them to death. The accused were members of various backward castes. The incident was the offered as by the Scheduled Caste/ Neo-Buddhist organisations for the well planned Nagpur riots. The criminal act was in fact carried out by assailants from the numerically dominant Kunbi[3] caste (classified as Other Backward Classes[4]) for "opposing" the requisition of their field to have a road built over it. Initial reports suggested that the women were gang-raped before being murdered. Though CBI investigations concluded that the women were not raped,[5] there were allegations of bribery of doctors who performed the post-mortem, and of corruption.[6]

There were allegations that the local police shielded the alleged perpetrators in the ongoing investigation. A government report on the killings, prepared by the social justice department and YASHADA—the state academy of developmental administration, has implicated top police officers, doctors and even a BJP member of the Legislative Assembly, Madhukar Kukade in an alleged coverup and hindering the investigations. Kukade has denied these charges, saying that he had not even been in Kherlanji in months. The state Home Minister R. R. Patil admitted to initial lapses in police investigation and said that five policemen suspended in the investigation of the killings have been dismissed.[7] In December 2006, CBI filed a chargesheet against 11 persons under charges of murder, criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly with deadly weapons and outraging the modesty of women. CBI also said that it will investigate the role of the 36 people under detention.[5]

The media coverage of the incident was initially weak, but picked up momentum after an investigative feature article by Sabrina Buckwalter with the help of social activist Deelip Mhaske in The Times of India provided the first mainstream, in-depth coverage of the massacre.[8]

In September 2008, six people were given the death sentence for the crime.[9] However, on 14 July 2010, the Nagpur bench of the High Court commuted the death penalty awarded to the six convicted to a 25-year rigorous imprisonment jail sentence.

Protests against the killings in the Kherlanji village took place in various parts of Maharashtra. On 19 November 2006, over 4,000 Scheduled Caste citizens gathered at the Azad maidan in Mumbai to protest against the Khairlanji incident.[10] On 23 November 2006, several members of the Scheduled Caste community in the nearby district of Chandrapur staged a protest over the Khairlanji killings. The protesters allegedly turned violent and threw stones. The police baton-charged the protesters to control the situation. Scheduled Caste leaders, however, denied that they had caused any violence and claimed that they were "protesting in peace".

Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 600,000 to the next of kin of the victims' family, and housing and job awards to the affected family members. He also assured that his government would give an additional Rs 200,000 to them from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

In November and December 2006, the desecration of an Ambedkar statue in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh triggered off violent protests by Buddhists in Maharashtra. Several people, including the Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh[11] and the Mumbai Police Commissioner A N Roy[12] remarked that the protests were fuelled by the Khairlanji killings.[13][14]