The Madras high court on Friday upheld a trial court order convicting over 200 men, including forest and police officials and sentencing them to various prison terms for atrocities committed against tribals including rape, where the victims included a minor girl and a pregnant woman.
The atrocities, that sent shockwaves across Tamil Nadu, happened during a raid for smuggled sandalwood at Vachathi village in Dharmapuri district in 1992. The CBI probed the case.
A lower court in Dharmapuri had in 2011 convicted and sentenced 215 men to prison terms ranging from 1 to 10 years. Incidentally, the HC order came exactly 12 years after the ruling of the trial court, which delivered it on September 29, 2011.
On Friday, Justice P Velmurugan also directed providing an immediate compensation of Rs 10 lakh to 18 women, who were victims of sexual assault during the infamous incident in Dharmapuri, about 300 km from Chennai.
Dismissing a batch of appeals from the accused, Justice Velmurugan said, "In view of the above discussion and for the foregoing reasons, this court finds all the accused have committed the charged offences. There are no merits in these appeals. All the criminal appeals stand dismissed as devoid of merits. The trial court is directed to secure the custody of the accused to serve remaining period of sentence, if any."
The judge directed the state government to pay Rs 10 lakh to the rape victims and recover 50 percent of the amount from the accused who committed the offence.
The court also directed the state government to provide suitable employment either by self-employment or permanent jobs to the 18 victims or their family members for their livelihood, which were destroyed by the then government officials.
The state government shall report to this court regarding the welfare measures taken to improve the livelihood and standard of living of the Vachathi villagers, after this incident, the judge added.
The judge directed the state government to take stringent action against the then district collector, the then superintendent of police and then district forest officer during the relevant period.
He said the then collector and the revenue officials have not shown any interest in the matter and did not care about the seriousness of the issue. Even a prosecution witness had given complaints to them prior to the raid regarding smuggling of sandalwood by identifying persons.
They have not taken any action against real sandalwood smugglers. In order to safeguard the actual smugglers and the big names, the revenue, police and forest officials, with the help of the then government, played a big drama, in which the innocent tribal women were affected and the pain and difficulties faced by them have to be compensated in terms of money and jobs, the court said.
When it was the case of the appellants that the Vachathi villagers were involved in the cutting and smuggling of sandalwood trees and that they attacked officials when they conducted raids, the government should have taken effective steps to prevent the same at least by setting up a check-post on the route through which the alleged smuggling had taken place.
But, the forest department officials have not taken any effective steps to monitor and to prevent the alleged smuggling by the Vachathi villagers, which clearly shows that officials colluded with the real smugglers, who engaged some of the villagers as 'coolies'.
Unfortunately, the then government (led by the AIADMK) failed to protect the tribal women and it only safeguarded the officials in question and also failed to find out the real sandalwood smugglers, the court added.
The judge said from reading of oral and documentary evidence it was clear all the appellants while conducting the raid, deviated from the objective of the search.
From the evidence of the witnesses it was clear all the officials including the district collector, DFO and the SP, even though they knew who the real culprits were, for reasons best known to them, have not taken any action against them.
To safeguard the real culprits, the innocent villagers were victimised.
The Dharmapuri court had held as guilty 126 forest personnel, including four IFS officers, 84 men from police and five from the revenue department in connection with the 1992 incident which was probed by the CBI later.
Out of the 269 accused, 54 died during the pendency of the trial.
