A Jehanabad court on Tuesday sentenced 10 people to death and three others to life imprisonment for the March 1999 massacre of 34 people in Senari village.
On March 18, 1999, activists of the erstwhile Maoist Communist Centre killed 34 upper caste people at Senari village, around 100km southwest of Patna, in Arwal district. The people were forced out of their houses and lined up near a temple where their throats were slit.
Fifteen people were on October 28 held guilty of the massacre. The court of additional district and sessions judge Ranjeet Kumar Singh sentenced the 15 treating it as "rarest of rare case".
Bachesh Kumar, Satyendra Das, Gorai Paswan, Lallan Pasi, Kariman Paswan, Uma Paswan, Dwarika Paswan, residents of Kumama village, Budhan Yadav and Gopal Sao of Senari village and Butayee Yadav of Mahadeo Bigha village were given the death sentence.
Dhibri village residents Mungeshwar Singh, Binay Paswan and Arvind Kumar were sentenced to life imprisonment as the court maintained that they were quite young (aged about 20 to 21 years old) at the time of the massacre and hence, could have been easily swayed by the offenders. The remaining two guilty persons were declared absconders as they were not present in court at the time of the judgment.
The Senari massacre was the last in a series of caste-related killings, in which the Maoist Communist Centre and upper caste organisations such as the Ranvir Sena were involved. The Senari massacre followed the Laxmanpur-Bathe carnage, in which 57 Dalits were murdered in 1997.
In October 2013, Patna High Court acquitted all 26 accused in the 1997 massacre at Laxmanpur Bathe village for want of evidence.
Relatives of the deceased hailed the court verdict.
"I had thought that all the 15 people held guilty would be awarded death sentence," said Baliram Sharma, a resident of Senari village. "But we are more or less satisfied with the court order."
"Justice has been done sooner or later," said survivor Ajay Sharma.
The Jehanabad court held all the 15 people guilty under sections 302/149, 307/149, 25 of the Indian Penal Code, the Arms Act and Section 3/5 of the Explosive Substance Act. In addition, a penalty of Rs 30 lakh each was imposed on the convicts. On failure to pay the penalty, they will have to serve additional three years each.
Additional public prosecutor Bijendra Kumar Singh said the court acquitted 23 persons for lack of evidence. The court directed arrest warrants to be issued against absconders Ganauri Majhi and Naresh Yadav. "We presented a strong case with a lot of corroborative evidences," he said.
The FIR was lodged on the statement of Chinta Devi, whose husband was killed.
