Six months after the ghastly lynching of 10 alleged thieves in Chintamani taluk, men in villages dread the sight of men in khaki. The police have till now arrested 72, but the villagers claim that many of them are innocent, reports Praveen Kumar.
The thieves may have gone and the police may have taken charge, but the villagers of Barlahalli, Yerrakote, Bachwarapalli, Muddlahalli, Nimmakayalapalli, Kanchettpalli and 18 other villages in Chintamani taluk in Chikballapur are still living in fear.
Six months ago, these villagers were targeted by a gang of thieves from Andhra Pradesh.
Ten suspected thieves were allegedly caught and murdered by irate villagers on August 2. Six of the thieves were burnt alive in a car, while four were beaten to death. Six policemen, including two police-sub inspectors, were suspended for dereliction of duty.
When Deccan Chronicle visited some of these villages to find out conditions there today, we found that the villagers are still living in fear of the police. Though the situation is back to normal, the men in these villages fear that they will be framed in the murder case.
After the brutal killing, men in these villages had fled and some of them have not returned yet. But those who still live in the villages have alleged been wrongly implicated in the murders. The Chintamani sub-division police have arrested 72 men and at least half of them are said to be innocent.
Even the local MLA, Dr Sudhakar, says so, alleging that the police are framing innocent persons.
“People who were not even in the villages, youths working in Bengaluru, youths who had gone to college, men who had gone to distribute invitation cards, have all been arrested by the police,” the MLA said.
He said the issue has been brought to the notice of home minister R. Ashok, who has assured him that the names of the innocent will be deleted at the time of filing the chargesheet.
“If there is no help from the home minister, we will have to fight it in the court. The police are to blame for the entire incident and its aftermath. I strongly suspect that the police were hand in glove with the accused. After the suspected thieves were caught, it was like a free-for-all with every passerby beating them up. It is not clear if the 10 deceased are really the thieves,” Dr Sudhakar said.
“I was not even in my village when the incident occurred and came back a few days after the incident. I was unaware that some thieves had been killed in the village. Some policemen came to my house while I was sleeping, and picked up me and my son and took us into custody,” said Y.V. Venkataramanachari, a farmer of Yerrakote village.
It was difficult getting the scared villagers to talk when the DC team visited the villages. Many claimed that the real culprits are still at large and that the innocent are being victimised.
Venkataramanachari says he and his son Y.V. Nanachari spent 105 days in jail for no fault of theirs. “We were not there. We did not even know what exactly happened on August 2. Since we had not committed any crime, there was no reason for us to flee from the village. But when we were resting, the police came to our house and picked us up. We were told it was for recording our statements. But once we entered the police station, we were in the jail for the next 105 days.
“It is simple logic that the real accused will definitely be on the run, but the police don’t seem to understand this and are targeting innocent persons. Because of this ‘fixing’, some of the men have fled the villages. We are presently out on bail on condition that we visit the jurisdictional police station thrice a week. Why are we being victimised? The police have failed to nab the real accused. We want justice. The police have arrested 12 men from Yerrakote village, including Munirajappa, Naresh, and Narayanswamy, all of whom are innocent,” Venkataramanachari said.
Nagaraj, a gram panchayat member of Barlahalli village, said, “Some village elders who are innocent have been arrested. The police just picked up the available men in the village. After the incident, the police said that they are setting up a police outpost in Murugamalla village, but nothing happened after that.
“Some of the real accused are still at large and no one knows who they are. There were several people that day and even passersby were targeting the ‘thieves’. Some of them video recorded the event. The police, based on these clippings, have arrested some. Most of them are innocent. The arrested persons were just watching the killing and were not involved,” Nagaraj alleged.
Jayalakshmi was the first to raise the alarm about the thieves who targeted her while she was out in her fields.
Jayalakshmi is still very scared.
“Please do not ask me anything. I have had enough. When some strangers attack a woman while she is working in the field, what else can she do but scream for help? They came to me and threatened me to hand over my gold ornaments. I shouted for help and all the passersby surrounded them. These unidentified men were locked inside a room in the village. After they were nabbed in Yerraokote, their associates were found at Barlhalli village.
"As news spread, people from neighbouring villages came, broke open the room, pulled out the suspected thieves and started beating them. I was too terrified to even move out of the house. I do not know what happened later and what I learnt was that these unidentified men were beaten to death,” she said.
Her husband Chandrashekar said that their intention was to hand over the suspects to the police. “But when a mob of over 500 started asking for the suspects, we had no control over them. We were not in a position to convince the mob to wait till the police arrived, as we would have been suspected of taking the side of the suspects. The unidentified men were grabbed and pulled out on the street and were beaten to death,” he said.
“Even now I am scared. I hardly go out of the house. The police have come on many occasions to record my statement,” said Jayalakshmi. She said there was a spurt in the number of robbery cases in neighbouring villages and the villagers, unable to get much help from the police, were searching for the thieves themselves. “The fear still continues in me. Please go away,” cried the agitated woman.
Starting this week, Deccan Chronicle, B'luru brings you the Sunday Story, in keeping with our commitment to running hard-hitting exposes that go behind the news.
