HC order prompted FIR...after nearly 32 months

DHARMAPURI: The sufferings of a largely illiterate Adivasi population at Vachathi in Dharmapuri after they were subjected to ‘khaki brutality’ in June 1992, would have been suppressed forever had not the Madras High Court ordered a CBI probe in February 1995.That it took 32 months for an FIR to be registered in the case in which 18 women were raped, 90 villagers — mostly women — and 28 children, were assaulted and arrested, would speak volumes about the administrative callousness and influential attempts to bury the barbaric assault on an entire village.As the administration did not heed their demands, then CPM MP A Nallasivan had moved the Madras High Court seeking a CBI inquiry into the incident. Among the documents submitted in the court included an inquiry report of Bamathi, then Director, SC and ST Commission, Tamil Nadu.On the basis of this report and other materials, the HC ordered a CBI inquiry. “Only after that the FIR was registered and  investigations commenced. A year later, in 1996, the CBI filed the charge sheet before the CBI court in Coimbatore and thereafter the trial was shifted to a court in Krishnagiri before finally being concluded in Dharmapuri,” explains P Shanmugam, secretary, Tamil Nadu Tribals Association. There were several attempts to delay court proceedings and numerous cases were filed in the High Court to stall the trial. “We crossed all the hurdles and today three of the accused did not turn up holding up the judgment,” he points out.