Vachathi violence | Survivors recount memories ahead of Madras HC verdict on appeal petitions

A sessions court convicted all 269 accused personnel on September 29, 2011. Among them, 17 were charged with rape. The surviving 217 accused, who were mostly former forest, revenue, and police personnel, were sentenced to jail for brutalising the inhabitants of the tribal hamlet in Dharmapuri

Vacchathi, a village inhabited mostly by ‘Malayali’ (hill) tribes, sits at the foothills of Sitheri Hills in Dharmapuri district. | Photo Credit: N. Bashkaran

Paranthayi’s toothless slur fumbles, but her memory holds steady, revisiting the horrors of those fateful days of June 20 and its immediate aftermath in 1992, when a little known tribal hamlet of Vachathi in Dharmapuri was forced into the registry of the country’s chequered history of State violence.

This village of ‘Malayali’ (hill) tribes was besieged by a contingent of forest, revenue, and police personnel, in what was an ostensible raid against sandalwood logging, an accusation denied by the landless inhabitants. But, what followed was a three-day rampage that led to the brutalisation of 18 young girls, some of them children; destruction of homes; pillaging of livestock; and beaten bodies, according to the testimonies after the Central Bureau of Investigating (CBI) took over the investigation of the case.

On Friday, when the Madras High Court delivers its verdict on appeal petitions, it would be exactly 12 years to date from the last verdict on September 29, 2011, by a sessions court, which convicted all 269 accused personnel. Among them, 17 were also convicted on the charge of rape. The surviving 217 officials were sentenced to jail for impunity of State violence.

Among the convicts on appeal is an Assistant Conservator of Forests, Conservator of Forests, and District Forest Officer, who led the raid. The first accused was the Principal Conservator of Forests (PCCF), who sent a letter with directions for the evidence to be destroyed.

Ms. Paranthayi along with her neighbour Ramayi may perhaps be the oldest surviving members, who still quiver with tears when informed of the impending judgment. The court verdict in itself seemed insignificant to them, but the haunting memories weren’t.

Her daughter had come back home with a sack of mangoes picked from the grove that afternoon. She along with 17 other young women were gathered and dragged to be brutalised. “They rounded up young girls and took them up there and brutalised them,” says Ms. Paranthyi, looking into at some foothills in the distance.

The women and children were taken in vehicles to Harur forest office, where they were beaten before being thrown into the Salem jail for three months. “I couldn’t get myself to eat in jail,” says Ms. Ramayi. She points to Ms. Paranthayi and recollects how she was asked to jump up and down with internal bruises to loosen the blood clots from the beatings by the Forest Department. Putrid memories of victimhood and its humiliation still hung like a shadow over the few seniors, who were available to talk on Thursday afternoon of the collective punishment.

Present day Vachathi by glance is precarity in itself – where houses are renovated with loans from visiting micro-financiers for weekly interest and its inhabitants are on survival mode to repay the loans through farm wages.

If Vachathi became a symbol of State violence, it also showed how the comrades of the Communist movement walked with the victims and stayed with them, when political engagements are largely transactional.

P. Shanmugam, of the Tamil Nadu Tribal Association reached Sitheri on July 14, 1992, after the violence came to light a fortnight later, and the local party unit alerted him. He has been with the victims since then along with ex-Harur MLA Dilli Babu and others as fellow travellers in their collective fight for justice.

“He will come for each hearing all those years, along with Dilli Babu and others,” says a journalist of those times.

“They kept watch day and night in the village, to protect us; visited us in the jail, fought our case, came for every court hearing, told us not to worry,” says Ms. Paranthayi, listing out their names. “When the men vanished into the Sitheri Hills fearing the brutality of the Forest Department, the party waved the sengodi (Red Flag) at the hills to tell them to come home and that now they would be safe,” she says, looking at the green Sitheri Hills on whose foothills her village sits.

On Friday, Mr. Shanmugam will be at the High Court for the verdict. “It is a foolproof case, investigated by the CBI. We believe that the High Court will uphold the sessions court’s verdict,” he says.