Within a month of beginning a probe into the murder of four members of a Dalit family at Khairlanji village of Bhandara district in Maharashtra, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on 28 December 2006 filed a charge-sheet against 11 people.

The charge-sheet was filed in the court of a judicial magistrate against them for murder, the outraging modesty of women, allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly with deadly weapons, trespass and destruction of evidence as well as offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act of 1989. The killing of the four Dalits at Khairlanji village had sparked widespread protests.

However, the CBI said in its charge-sheet that no rape was committed against the two women who were killed in mob violence. The accused would be produced in the court on 29 December 2006.

Giving details of the incident, the CBI said the 11 charge-sheeted people and others hatched a criminal conspiracy at Khairlanji on the evening of 29 September 2006 to murder Bhaiyalal Sudam Bhotmange and his family. They then formed an ‘unlawful assembly’ with deadly weapons and committed criminal trespass into Bhotmange’s house in the village.

Surekha Bhotmange was running for her life but was dragged by a mob that stripped the Dalit woman and beat her mercilessly with wooden sticks and bicycle chains. Her head was then banged repeatedly against a wall to ensure her death. Surekha's 17-year-old daughter Priyanka was dragged out of her hiding in a stable and done to death in a similar manner and so were her two young brothers Sudhir and Roshan - the latter partially blind.

While thus killing the four members of the Bhotmange family, the frenzied group was hurling invectives referring to their caste. Their job done, the mob comprising people belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) heaped the four bodies in a bullock-cart and threw them in a canal one and a half km away.

They did not forget to warn onlookers in the village of dire consequences if they spoke a word about what happened before leaving the blood drenched surroundings of the Dalit household.

The Dalit killings sent shock waves across the country, triggering violent protests at several places and creating uproar in the state legislature. United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi said the incident had 'made us hang our heads in shame'.

Bhaiyyalal, the sole survivor of the Bhotmange family who could manage to flee before the mob swooped down on his house, has been given cash compensation and a government job that could hardly help him forget the nightmare.

It all began on 3 September 2006 when Siddharth Gajbhiye, a family friend of the Bhotmanges, slapped one Sakru Mahagu Binjewar inside Bhaiyyalal's house. Sakru, whose wife worked as a labourer on Gajbhiye's farm, had demanded her wages from him. During the wordy duel that ensued, Gajbhiye, a wealthy and influential police patil of the adjoining village, slapped Sakru. Sakru and his friends thrashed Gajbhiye the same evening in front of Bhaiyyalal's wife Surekha and daughter Priyanka.

In their statement to the police along with Gajbhiye's complaint about the beating, the two women 'implicated' 12 people against whom they allegedly had an axe to grind when actually only four people had assaulted Gajbhiye.

On being released on bail on 29 September 2006, the 'wronged' friends of Sakru, joined by some others in the village, marched straight to Bhotmanges' house and settled the scores.

The Bhotmanges lived on the outskirts of the village in a row of about dozen huts atop a mound 'meant' for people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes. Their repeated pleas for small plots of housing land in the village of 120 households were allegedly ignored by the village council that the majority OBCs controlled.

Owning a five-acre farm that they themselves tilled, the Bhotmanges were a 'proud' family with their school and college-going children refusing to pay obeisance to the 'socially superior' majority in the village and did not flinch from standing up to the bigwigs in land and other disputes. They paid with their life for jealously guarding their self-respect.