After Bathani Tola HC acquits nine in Miapur massacre case

Patna,(BiharTimes): More than a year after the Bathani Tola massacre case ruling a division bench of Justice V N Sinha and Justice A K Lal of the Patna High Court on Wednesday overturned the order of life imprisonment to nine alleged members of Ranvir Sena in Miapur (Aurangabad) massacre case of June 16, 2000.

The Court acquitted all nine of them, citing lack of evidence.

In all 34 Dalits and backward caste men, women and children were killed by Ranvir Sena at Miapur. It also ordered their release if they were not wanted in any other case.

But the Court upheld the life term awarded to one of the accused, Avinash Chandra Sharma, who too was convictd by the Aurangabad court along with the nine others in the same case.

In 2007 Aurangabad additional district judge Krishna Kant Dwivedi had found ten persons charged in the carnage case guilty and had awarded them life terms.

It needs to be recalled that 300 internationally reputed writers, activists and human rights workers, including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Jean Dreze etc had last year appealed to the Supreme Court to provide justice to the victims of Bathani Tola massacre of July 1996 after the Patna High Court acquitted the accused on lack of evidence. Twenty-one Dalits and Muslims were killed by Ranvir Sena men in this village of Bhojpur district.