Nearly 44 years after 24 Dalits were brutally killed in a targeted massacre in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, three men have been convicted for their role in the attack.
A district court in Mainpuri found the three accused guilty of multiple offences, including murder, conspiracy, and house trespass to commit an offence punishable by death, said government counsel Rohit Shukla.
The sentencing is scheduled for 18 March, reported the Indian Express. The convictions bring partial closure to the case, with 13 of the accused dying over the years and one still absconding.
The killings took place on 18 November 1981 in Dehuli, a village that was then part of Mainpuri district but now falls under Firozabad. Armed assailants stormed homes, gunning down 24 people, including seven women and two minors, before looting their belongings. The attack was allegedly in retaliation against villagers who had testified against a notorious criminal gang whose members mostly belonged to the so-called upper caste Thakur community.
Those convicted include Ram Sevak, who remains in custody, and Kaptan, who was taken into custody following the verdict. The third accused, Rampal, failed to appear in court, and a non-bailable warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The massacre was one of the most horrific caste-based killings in India’s history. Dehuli at the time had a population of about 900 people. The residents were mostly Dalit, primarily from the Jatav and Rangia communities, historically marginalised groups engaged in trades such as tanning and shoemaking. The attackers, who were led by gang leaders Radheshyam Singh (Radhey) and Santosh Singh (Santosha), and dressed in police uniforms stormed the settlement in broad daylight, revealed an India Today report filed on 15 December 1981.
For four hours, they systematically hunted and executed every Dalit they could find, revealed the report. Victims were shot at point-blank range, their bodies left scattered in homes and alleyways.
According to the report, a mother, who herself died in the massacre, threw her infants onto a hut’s roof to save them, men burrowed into haystack, and a young boy was hidden inside a cupboard by his mother to escape the killing.
The prosecution argued that the massacre was premeditated, Advocate Shukla was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
A year and a half before the killings, a police encounter had led to the arrest of two members of the Radhey-Santosh gang, he told the outlet. Four villagers from Dehuli had acted as witnesses. The attack was meant to silence and terrorise Dalits in the region, ensuring that no one dared challenge the dominance of upper-caste criminals, the prosecution argued. India abolished caste-based discrimination in 1955, but centuries-old biases against lower-caste groups, including Dalits persist.
The fallout of the massacre was significant. Then-chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, came under pressure to resign but insisted that restoring law and order was a greater priority.
“Either we protect the survivors and bring the killers to justice, or we might as well find someone else to run this state,” he told reporters at the time. He vowed to take a hard stance against caste-based violence, but his tenure remained under scrutiny as lawlessness continued.
In the days following the massacre, Dehuli was thrown into mourning. Families gathered in the mortuary at Mainpuri, where six doctors worked for two days to perform post-mortems on the victims. The wounds were gruesome, with some bodies bearing multiple gunshots. The killers had mostly used 12-bore guns, rifles, and locally-made pistols.
Among the victims was a woman named Sarwati, 20, who was holding her infant son Rajesh when the killers arrived. The same bullet that pierced her chest also killed her child. A pregnant woman, Shanti Devi, who died from bullet injuries, was later found to have been carrying twins – a boy and a girl, India Today reported at the time.
