The Vachathi story: justice delivered, after the State turns mob Premium

In Vachathi, June 20, 1992, a joint force of the forest, police and revenue departments descended on the Malayali tribal village in an ostensible “crackdown on sandalwood logging”. This raid left a trail of gendered violence, with the rape of 18 tribal girls and the pillage of a village. After a three-decade long battle, 215 personnel of forest, revenue and police were convicted of rape and pillage. The court denied the impunity enjoyed by the State apparatus and the patriarchal diktat of the rape survivors’ silence and shame. The survivors’ accounts exposed the layers of gendered violence, and the Court erased the blemish of false smuggling cases against the victims. The verdict observed the collusion of forest officials with smugglers and the use of tribal poor as coolies. The survivors’ collective experience of violence was benumbed by their individual experience of punitive rape. The verdict placed on record the rot that ran deep, and to the top, profiting off the poor. The Court invoked ‘Command Responsibility’, pulling up the then District Collector and Superintendent of Police for the crimes. After 30 years, the women of Vachathi summoned ‘Command Responsibility’ and established that State actors have no right to absolute immunity.

The sprawling banyan tree of Vachathi and the now-defunct well, some metres away, had borne witness that late afternoon on June 20, 1992, when a joint force of the forest, police and revenue deparments descended on the Malayali tribal village at the foothills of Sitheri Hills in Harur in Dharmapuri district, in an ostensible “crackdown on sandalwood logging”. The raid left in its wake, a trail of gendered violence, with the rape of 18 tribal girls and the pillage of a village. 

The events of June 20, 1992 and their aftermath in Vachathi, would set in motion a three -decade long battle for justice for the women and the village, one that would culminate in the conviction of 215 personnel of forest, revenue and police, who had participated in the raid. 

On September 29, 2023, when Justice P. Velmurugan read the 78 page verdict upholding the 2011 trial court verdict convicting 215 men of the forest, revenue and police departments of rape and pillage in Vachathi, it threw two issues into the limelight, by denying them: the impunity enjoyed by the State apparatus under the cover of official duty and the patriarchal diktat of the rape survivors’ silence and shame.

Blanket immunity claimed under the guise of ‘official duty’ is not absolute, and rape and pillage do not constitute official duty, said the court. The survivors’ accounts that documented the layers of gendered violence exposed the stretch of that immunity that the accused persons had claimed, while hoping for the silence of the survivors of sexual assault, particularly because they were from marginalised communities.

“There were sudden wails in the village that swarmed with vehicles from all sides; the forest men in khakhi entered homes, threw and kicked things, dragged us by the hair, picked up people from the fields, beat and dragged women grazing livestock to the banyan tree,” says Rani, who was 13 years old and in class 8 at the time of the incident.  She, along with her then 17-year-old sister, was dragged from a shack in their uncle’s field to the banyan tree, where the entire village of women and children were huddled in fear. “The men had fled to the nearby Sitheri Hills thinking the women would not be harmed,” says Rani.

“They (forest personnel) scanned the crowd and summoned us young girls. They made us climb onto the lorry and drove off saying they needed us to find the hidden sandalwood. They took us to the lakeside and raped us,” says Lalitha, a survivor, who was 15 then. “When I was brought back, I didn’t know the other girls too, had been raped. We all kept silent.” The whole village was then taken to the Harur forest office, grouped into three groups of 30 women, and about 15 of the men who had remained. “There, they gave us a broomstick and forced us to beat our Oor Gownder Perumal (village head), and asked him, as we hit him, if this was how he protected his village,” says Lalitha. 

Also Read: Victory for the weak: On justice and the Vachathi verdict