Sexual Assault As Spectacle: A 'New Genre' Of Caste Violence In Khairlanji And Telgaon

This is the cover story for Outlook's 11 September 2024 magazine issue 'Lest We Forget'. To read more stories from the issue, click here

Latabai, 45, cannot move past the trauma of March 14, 2006. The date is etched in her memory as she recalls the events of the day with almost clinical precision to date, without even batting her eyelids. 

“What you’ve read in the news reports is all correct,” she says, sitting in a safe house near her native village of Telgaon in north Solapur. “Nagnadhind kadhli hoti” (we were paraded naked). Courage and conviction are evident in Latabai’s demure yet outspoken nature. 

It was just after 9 am. Latabai was waiting at the bus stop to go to the local police chowki when a large mob from her village gathered and began attacking her violently. Someone grabbed her hair and dragged her to the ground, while others pulled at her saree and tore her blouse. Within minutes, she was stripped naked. Her hands were tied behind her back.

Her six-year-old son Pawan was hauled from the school and brought to the village square. He too was stripped naked. Assailed and disrobed, the mother and son were then paraded across the village. The entire village gathered to see the spectacle. Men, women and children jeered at them from a distance, but no one came close to rescue them.

“If you open your mouth again or tell anyone about this incident, you will be burned alive in the house,” the mother and son were warned.

A TV journalist along with social activist Yashwant Fadtare, by chance, happened to pass through Telgaon on the same day, recorded the incident with a handheld camera. “The mob was holding this woman by her hair. She had no clothes on her. We pleaded with the instigators to let her dress at least and let them (mother and son) go,” Fadtare says, recalling the incident with a shaky voice.

The video and photos of the incident and Latabai’s testimony at a subsequent press conference in Solapur, startled Maharashtra, leaving social and political classes agitated and aggrieved.  

In another similarly jarring incident, that occurred less than six months later, at Khairlanji, in Bhandara district in northeast Maharashtra, four members of a Dalit family were tortured and killed. Surekha Bhootmange (40), her sons, Roshan (21), Sudhir (19) and her daughter, Priyanka (17), were paraded naked. The mother and daughter were also gang-raped. The brutality of the Khairlanji massacre flared up violent protests and riots for weeks across Maharashtra.

“Such crimes happen with Dalit women because of casteism. We are from the lower castes. Have you ever heard about such crimes against upper-caste women,” Latabai questions.

The two incidents catapulted Telgaon and Khairlanji, obscure villages until then, as the twin ground zeroes of heinous caste crimes and gender violence in rural Maharashtra.

The violence against Dalits was becoming “more violent, more physically destructive and more brutal than before” and “constituted a new genre of atrocities,” notes scholar Anand Teltumbde. “The hallmark of these cases was that it is a spectacle of demonstrative justice. The instigators want to make an example out of the atrocities to teach the scheduled castes a lesson if they defy the caste code,” he says.

Teltumbde, in his book The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders & India’s Hidden Apartheid, analysed numerous instances of caste atrocities. He found that at the root of this brutality was the empowerment of Scheduled Castes due to factors such as land reforms, productivity gains from agriculture, industrialisation, the capitalist economy, globalisation and competitive electoral politics.

“In the past, atrocities were a manifestation of contempt; today, they are a manifestation of the deep resentment towards the ‘privileges’ Scheduled Castes receive from the state,” he notes in the book.

Both Telgaon and Khairlanji exemplify findings from Teltumbde’s book.

Both cases sparked national outrage, but the victims did not get the justice that was due to them. In Khairlanji massacre, initially 43 people were accused of killing an entire family. The number was reduced to 11 accused and eventually only six were given life imprisonment. None of the atrocity cases have reached their logical end. The main culprits are scot-free and in their place, some dummy accused are presented. Due to political pressure, hasty judgements are delivered. No one faces capital punishment even if the crimes are gory,” he says.

In the Telgaon case, the police hesitated for three days before registering Latabai’s complaint and initially dodged invoking caste atrocity charges. Of Telgaon’s 1,500 residents, 80 per cent belong to the Maratha and general castes, while the remaining population consists of Dalits and OBCs.

“There were clear attempts to suppress the case because the instigators were politically connected,” says Fadtare, one of the key witnesses in the Telgaon case. All the accused were from the dominant general caste, while Latabai belongs to the Charmakar community, a scheduled caste.

Weeks before the horrific crime, there were murmurs in the village that she would be paraded naked. Her ‘crime’, according to Latabai, was that villagers perceived her as being “over smart”.

A single mother living with her young son, village strongmen, mostly Marathas, warned her to mind her behaviour. Previously, the local police had started an investigation following an anonymous letter about Telgaon becoming a den of illicit liquor business and prostitution, purportedly run by the strongmen. Villagers suspected Latabai of writing the letter. She persistently tried to convey to the villagers, that she had not tipped-off the police with the anonymous letter, but her frequent trips out of the village pointed the needle of suspicion towards her.

At the time, Latabai was in the middle of divorce proceedings, for which she routinely commuted to the courts in Solapur city. “They thought that if this woman could fight with her husband, she was “too smart” for herself and only she could’ve dared to write the letter. They kept threatening me constantly even when I told them it was not me,” she says.

Police investigation into the case found no evidence that Latabai wrote the letter. The handwriting in the letter did not match hers, she emphasises, to prove her innocence. “Injustice was meted out against me, even when I did not commit any wrong. We are outcasts in the village. No one talks to us. We can’t go around in the village. They dishonoured me and humiliated me, but it seems only I am being punished.”

Since the incident, Latabai’s family has faced a social embargo by upper-caste villagers. She is prohibited from buying groceries, ration supplies or kerosene from the village stores. She travels 20 km away to Solapur city to buy monthly food supplies. “We are isolated. We are on our own. Even the neighbour next door doesn’t talk to me. They are all afraid of these village goons.”

Even Dalit and OBC villagers refrain from interacting for fear of repercussions. Shreerang Rokade, a village elder also from the Charmakar caste, who was among the only people to support Latabai after the 2006 incident, was also targeted. “What happened to her should not have happened to anyone. We were all locked inside our houses. It is something that one should not see.”

Rokade’s house is at the other end of the village, nearly half a kilometre away from Latabai’s. Being from the same community, Rokade would visit her house to express solidarity and give her support, but the gesture backfired as the village panchayat prohibited him from interacting with Latabai too. “These people are terrifying. The situation in our village is difficult because of them. They created obstructions for me in employment. I lost a lot of work opportunities. No one was willing to hire me as a worker for cutting sugarcane.” 

In 2020, the district and sessions court in Solapur sentenced nine people, including two women, for assaulting and parading naked Latabai and her minor child. They were sentenced to five years of rigorous punishment, but all nine accused are out on bail and back in Telgaon.

After the incident, national and state-level Dalit leaders visited Latabai, assuring swift justice. Questions about the case were raised in Parliament. The state government promised compensation and rehabilitation, but two decades later, little has changed in Latabai’s life.

The tragedy of her story is such that she and her son not only continue to live alongside the convicts but even work on their farms as labourers.

“We don’t have any other option. They are the wealthy and affluent landholders in the village. The Dalit samaj is impoverished, we do not own land,” says Pawan. “We would have liked to move to another village, but we don’t have resources. Where can we go? Who will look after us?” adds Latabai. “The government should have rehabilitated us, given a job to my son. But we are left to fend for ourselves.”

From 2006 until a few weeks ago, Latabai and Pawan-who is 25 years old now-along with his wife and two children, lived under police protection. Two police constables were her constant companions, standing guard outside her house and accompanying her as she worked as a farm labourer. In recent days, police protection has been taken away.

“The convicts pass by the road in front of my house. I have to see their faces daily. Our lives are still in danger. We still fear getting attacked by them,” she says.

Atul Kulkarni, Superintendent of Police, Solapur Rural, said he was unaware of the case as he has recently taken charge. “We will ensure that the survivor is protected,” he says.

In the past, she faced multiple life-threatening attempts, but Latabai has remained undeterred. On every such occasion, she has gone back to the police station to register a complaint, so that the culprits could be punished legally.  

Latabai credits her courage to the support of activists like Fadtare, who have stood by her and supported her in crossing the maze of social stigma, police cases, courts and laws. “I have to be daring on my own. I draw my strength from Babasaheb Ambedkar. Whatever has to happen, will happen. I will not back down.” 

Note: Latabai and Pawan wanted to use their real names, but Outlook has changed their names to protect their identity. Outlook did not attempt to seek comments from the accused at the request of Latabai, as she lives in the same village without police protection and fears for her life.

A shorter, edited version of this appeared in print