UPDATE

Justice at last

FOUR years after the murder in broad daylight of K. Murugesan, president of Melavalavu panchayat in Tamil Nadu's Madurai district, his brother Karuppaiah, vice-president Mookkan and three other members of the panchayat, all Dalits, justice has run its course. On July 26, 17 of the 41 accused were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Principal District and Sessions Judge of Salem, A.S. Ramalingam. The court acquitted 23 of the remaining accused. One of the accused died during trial. The case was transferred to the court in Salem from the Madurai Sessions Court on orders from the Madras High Court.

The massacre, which took place on June 30, 1997, was widely viewed as a stark instance of caste Hindu violence against Dalits in Tamil Nadu (Frontline, July 25, 1997). The victims were pulled out of a bus and hacked to death. Murugesan's head was cut off and thrown into a well 400 metres away from the spot of the murder.

The incident, seen also as a manifestation of upper-caste intolerance of Dalit empowerment, marked the culmination of a series of protests by sections of caste Hindus in Melavalavu against the 1996 government notification reserving the panchayat for Dalits (Frontline, September 29, 2000). Initially, Dalits, who mostly depended on caste Hindu landholders for their livelihoods, were threatened with a social and economic boycott. Dalits who filed their nominations had to withdraw in the face of threats from caste Hindus, and the elections were rendered infructuous. When elections were held later, booth-capturing necessitated a repoll. Although Murugesan was elected president, he was not allowed to function as one. Accompanied by the vice-president and other members of the panchayat, he went to Madurai and submitted a petition to the District Collector seeking protection so that they could discharge their duties. The attack took place on their way back to Melavalavu.

The massacre spurred protests in various parts of the State. A State-wide bandh called by protesters evoked only partial response. Several State transport buses, shops and business establishments were torched in various places. In Cuddalore district, two persons were killed when police fired at protesters.

The case had a tortuous course. When it was committed to the Madurai Sessions Court, there were complaints of harassment of witnesses. Allowing a petition that pleaded for the transfer of the case to a court outside the district, the Madras High Court transferred the case to the Salem Sessions Court and appointed a Special Public Prosecutor.

High Court advocate P. Rathinam told Frontline that a team of lawyers and some Dalit activists worked hard for the success of the case. However, Dalit organisations, which showed interest initially, backed out later. An appeal against the trial court's refusal to entertain a petition relating to the payment of compensation to the victims under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, is pending before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, in Melavalavu, Dalits continue to suffer from an undeclared social and economic boycott by caste Hindus.

S. Viswanathan

SCIENTISTS at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have retracted a 1999 claim that they had created a new, superheavy element. Not only did subsequent experiments at Berkeley and other laboratories fail to reproduce the findings, but, on second look, the original data did not support the claim for the new element, with 118 protons and 175 neutrons, the scientists said. The heaviest element found in more than trace amounts in nature is uranium, with 92 protons.

In the Lawrence Berkeley experiments, an international team of scientists slammed krypton atoms into a piece of lead. Sifting through the data, they concluded that they had found three collisions in which, in a rapid chain of events, a krypton atom and a lead atom fused together into Element 118 - that is, an element with 118 protons - and then, within one ten-thousandth of a second, decayed to Element 116 (also a never-before-seen element), then 114, then 112 and on down to 106.

"We are very certain the events aren't there," Pier Oddone, the laboratory's deputy director. "As scientists, we have a responsibility when a mistake like that is made to fess up." In a statement to Physical Review Letters, which published the 1999 results, the researchers said they and independent experts had re-examined the data. "Based on these reanalyses," they said, "we conclude that the three reported chains are not in the 1999 data."

Research into new elements heavier than uranium, No.92, saw the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory creating 11 new elements, including plutonium, between 1940 and 1961. Since then a few more elements have been created, but progress in laboratories around the world has been slow for a variety of reasons including the intrinsic instability of the heavy atoms (Frontline, August 5, 1988).

The Laboratory is investigating how the scientists came to their faulty conclusion, whether a flawed computer programme, human error or even fraud is to blame. "Now we are like archaeologists, looking at what particular thing might have gone wrong," Oddone said. "We are not excluding anything." Oddone said the researchers had cooperated with the investigation and were "in great pain" over the retraction.

After the Lawrence Berkeley announcement two years ago, other laboratories tried collisions of krypton and lead atoms, but did not detect any signs of Element 118. Then, when the Lawrence Berkeley scientists themselves performed a longer run of observations this spring, "we started to realise there was a problem," said Kenneth E. Gregorich, head of the original research team.