The Senari carnage: The last mass killing of Bhumihars in Bihar
Patna,(BiharTimes): Bihar has travelled a long way ever since the March 18, 1999 slaughtering of 34 Bhumihars outside a temple at the hands of Maoists Communist Centre, now called CPI (Maoist) in Senari village of Karpi block of Jehanabad (now Arwal) district.
All the victims were male and between the age group of 15 and 45.
The incident took place just 10 days after the restoration of Rabri Devi government on March 8 after three weeks of President Rule following the Shankarbigha and Narayanpur carnages (both in Jehanabad districts) of January 25 and February 10, 1999 respectively. Twenty-four and 12 Dalit men, women and children were gunned down in these two mayhems carried out by Ranvir Sena, a private army of landed upper castes, in particularly Bhumihars.
It was a day after the second massacre at Narayanpur that the then Vajpayee government dismissed Rabri Devi government and imposed President’s Rule.
In fact the Janauary 25 late evening killings at Shankarbigha took place when the then President K R Narayanan was delivering his Republic Day eve speech.
The Ranvir Sena then issued a Press release and openly claimed responsibility. The Sena boasted that it has even gunned down a pregnant woman and blamed the then ‘Dalit President’ for rejecting the previous recommendation for imposition of President’s Rule in Bihar.
However, the Vajpayee government failed in Parliament as it has no majority in Rajya Sabha. It was thus compelled to reinstate Rabri Devi as the chief minister of Bihar.
In this three weeks period the Centre took several administrative and other measures.
Prime Minister Vajpayee toured the then undivided Bihar on March 4-5 to inaugurate several projects, which included the NTPC in Barh––the home-turf and parliamentary constituency of Nitish Kumar, who was then a Union minister in the NDA government.
Seventeen years later when the Jehanabad court pronounced death sentence to 10 accused and sentenced three to life imprisonment Nitish Kumar is in alliance with RJD chief Lalu Prasad. Now he is not blaming Bade Bhai for series of massacres carried out by Ranvir Sena and MCC.
Hundreds of people were killed in caste-related massacres in Bihar in 1980s and 1990s. After the creation of Jharkhand exactly 16 years ago agrarian violence shifted to the new state too. Only the nature of killings have somewhat changed.
Senari’s verdict is not the first one. In the last few years judgements have come on Bara (Gaya) and Bathani Tola (Bhojpur) massacres in which 35 Bhumihars and 21 Dalits were killed in 1992 and 1996 respectively.
But, while the court convicted four MCC men for Bara carnage, in case of Bathani Tola all the 23 accused were acquitted by Patna high court.
These two rulings, however, came when Nitish Kumar was ruling Bihar in alliance with the BJP and the social and political situation was different.
Today the secne has changed. Ranvir Sena is no more a force to reckon with. Instead of Maoists, its cadres and leaders got embroiled in self-destruction of outfit. Its founder Barmeshwar Singh alias Mukhiyji was killed by his own ‘commanders’ on June 1, 2012.
On the other hand the Maoists––may be not as strong as then––are still calling the shot in rurl Bihar as in several other states.
Anyway the Senari massacre may go down as the last big mass killing of Bhumihars at the hands of Maoists in Bihar.
