On January 25, 1999, 23 Scheduled Caste members were killed by suspected armed men of Ranvir Sena, a private militia of landlords, at Shankerbigha village in Jehanabad district.

The Case: Mehadia police station, case number 5/99 GR 171/99, state vs Brahmeshwar Singh (Ranvir Sena chief and others). Around 24 accused, 76 witnesses.

The Status: Chargesheets submitted against the accused. However, charges could not be framed as all the accused were not present in the court. Most of the accused, including the alleged mastermind Brahmeshwar Singh (mukhiya), are out on bail.

Even after 13 years of the incident, the accused are yet to be tried for the crime they allegedly committed a day before the 50th year of Indian Republic.

A suspected Ranvir Sena armed squad allegedly butchered the victims belonging to Scheduled Caste. The “apathetic attitude” of the prosecuting agency assumes significance in the wake of acquittal of all the 23 accused of Bathani Tola in Bhojpur massacre by the Patna High Court on April 17 this year, prompting the government to announce to move the Supreme Court against the lower court’s verdict.

The high court had set aside the judgment of an Ara court, which had awarded death sentence to three accused and life imprisonment to 20 others on May 16, 2010. The acquittal is considered a major setback to the state investigating agency and pointed fingers at the way investigation is carried out in such a sensitive case.

The Shankerbigha massacre was carried out allegedly to avenge the killing of Nawal Singh, a few days earlier, by the erstwhile Maoist Communist Centre. Singh was on the hit list of the Maoist Communist Centre ever since the1992 Mein Bersinha massacre.

In Mein Bersinha, the Ranvir Sena had allegedly killed six Scheduled Caste men. The Maoist Communist Centre had retaliated the incident by allegedly killing 37 upper caste people at Bara village in Gaya district in February 1992.

The Ranvir Sena suffered a blow after the killing of Singh, who had reportedly unleashed a reign of terror in the area, as he was a self-proclaimed commander of an 500-odd armed squad of the Sena.

After Singh’s killing, it was the turn of the Sena to hit back. The Sena chose January 25, an otherwise innocuous day that began with a group of upper caste men from nearby Dobbigha village coming to Shankerbigha to buy chickens.

They had reportedly bought 30kg of chicken and enjoyed a lavish party with liquor. The residents of the area found the visit of the men from the neighbouring village amusing. But they were happy, as it had ended a period of tension. By 8pm, more people from Dobbigha village came to Shankerbigha in small groups. The residents did not find anything unusual. The women were in the kitchen while the men and children were loitering around. Shankerbigha was preparing to retire for the night.

The men then struck. Suddenly the visitors had surrounded the entire village. They broke open the doors of the houses belonging to the Scheduled Caste and shot dead 23 people, including a 10-month-old baby.

As luck would have it, a witness, Lallan Sao survived the attack. The door of his house was too strong to break. As a result, the invaders had to return empty handed. Sao, however, heard the attackers shouting “Ranvir Baba ki jai” before they vanished into Dobbigha, Daulatpur and Hadia villages.

Justice still eludes the relatives of those, who fell victims to war of attrition or agrarian struggle. The Shankerbigha massacre is not an isolated case. Similar is the case with the victims of Senari massacre of 1999. Maoist Communist Centre cadres at Senari village in Arwal district killed about 35 people from the upper caste community in March 1999. The incident was fallout of the mass killings at Laxmanpur Bathe, Shankerbigha and Narayanpur.