The Vachathi case involved a mass crime that occurred on 20 June 1992 in the village of Vachathi, in

Dharmapuri district Dharmapuri is one of the 38 districts in the state of Tamil-Nadu, India. It is the first district created in Tamil Nadu after the independence of India by splitting it from then-Salem district on 2 October 1965. Dharmapuri District is one of ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

. A team of 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen and six revenue officials entered the

Tribal The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...

-dominated Vachathi village, searching for smuggled

sandalwood Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus ''Santalum''. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic woods, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for us ...

and to gather information about

Veerappan Koose Munisamy Veerappan (18 January 1952 – 18 October 2004) was an Indian bandit turned domestic terrorist who was active for 36 years, and kidnapped major politicians for ransom. He was charged with sandalwood smuggling and poaching o ...

. Under the pretext of conducting a search, the team ransacked the villagers' property, destroyed their houses, killed their cattle, assaulted around 100 villagers, and raped 18 women. After a court order, the CBI began probing the case, which was also under the scope of the NHRC. On 29 September 2011, a special court in India convicted all 269 accused officials under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities act and 17 for rape. Fifty-four of the original accused had died by the time of the convictions; the remaining 215 were sentenced to jail.

Background

Vachathi is a village located in

, away from the state capital

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

. During June 1992, the villagers, who were mostly tribals, prevented forest and revenue officials from entering the hamlet. The officials complained that the villagers were involved in sandalwood smuggling and aiding

, a notorious forest brigand. During the evening, 269 officials, being 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen and six revenue officials, raided the village and herded the villagers under a tree. A hundred men from the village were brutally assaulted while 18 women were gangraped. The raid continued for two days when the hamlet was demolished.

Trial

The trial was held at Dharmapuri Principal District Court. There were 269 accused in the case that had 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen, and six revenue officials. All the 269 who were accused were sentenced on 29 September 2011. Of the 269, 54 died during the trial. Of the remaining 215, 126 belonged to the forest department, 84 were policemen, and five were revenue officials. Out of the 17 rapists, 12 were sentenced to 17 years imprisonment and 5 had 5 years. The rest of the accused were sentenced to one to two years in prison.

Aftermath

Police were not ready to accept the case for three years and the then state minister K. A. Sengottaiyan commented that the villagers were aiding sandalwood smuggling. The villagers were denied compensation for a long time. On 12 September 2014, the state government offered a compensation of 12.2 lakh to all the victims. An additional 60,000 was allocated to each of the 105 villagers who were drafted in the chargesheet filed in 1999. The chargesheet was quashed by the court during November 2012.

Movie on the Incident

The entire incident has been made into a film by the name ''Vachathi'', and a novel called ''Solagar Thotti''.

External links

Vachathi Film
on

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

References