Dhule lynching: Fearing arrest, most Rainpada men have fled their village and maybe even the state

Dagubai Gaikwad, an elderly woman, struggled to hold back tears while explaining that the police arrested her nephew — who happens to be her only remaining family member, after her husband abandoned her a long time ago. Speaking in a dialect of Marathi replete with tribal phrases, she said, “The police has arrested my nephew (in his late 40s), who is mentally-challenged, and has accused him of being among the mob that killed five nomads on Sunday. Ganpati Gaikwad, my nephew, was a peon at the gram panchayat earlier and he doesn’t normally get involved in altercations or other problems. I have no idea how to get him released.”

Ganpati is among the 23 people arrested by the police in connection with the lynching of five men in Rainpada village on 1 July. Five of those arrested belong to the village. According to the villagers, the police has been arresting people randomly and so, almost all the men from the village have fled.

Lynching of five from Nathpanthi Davri Gosavi community

On 1 July, five members of the Nathpanthi Davri Gosavi community came to Kakripada hamlet, located around one-and-a-half kilometres Rainpada, and started to beg. This nomadic tribe generally travels from place-to-place and lives on alms. Its members set up makeshift houses outside the villages and visit the villages on weekly market days or during festival fairs. On arriving at any village, they first inform the local police.

When they got down from the bus, they interacted with the locals. It is alleged that a man — possibly in an inebriated state — began to raise an alarm that these five men belonged to the cartel of kidnappers who abduct children and remove their kidneys. Many villagers gathered around and started to thrash the victims. The victims were dragged to Rainpada village where a weekly market operates on Sundays. Meanwhile, villagers had sent messages to people living in nearby hamlets to gather at Rainpada.

Sakharam Pawar, former sarpanch of the village and one of the witnesses who tried to save victims, said, “To save those five people, we brought them to the gram panchayat office. But the mob — many of whom were likely under the influence of alcohol — carrying sticks and rods, was in condition to listen and even beat us to get into the gram panchayat office. They vandalised the office. We called the Pimpalner Police at around 9 or 10 am. A team of seven policemen reached the spot at around 12.30 pm when three were almost dead and the other two were in a bad condition. Before they could be taken to hospital, they had already died.”

The gram panchayat office is still open, even though everything inside — chairs, tables and a computer have been broken. The walls are covered with dark blood stains.

Yogesh Khatkal, police sub-inspector, Pimpalner Police Station, who was among those thrashed by the the mob, said, “We received a call by 11 am and reached the spot by 12.15 pm after covering 30 kilometres of bad roads. The number of people gathered was in the thousands, including onlookers who did not listen to us. When we tried to stop the mob, we were thrashed by them and I suffered a fractured hand.”

Akkabai Sable — a 50-year-old woman belonging to the Bhill tribe — who lives in Rainpada, began to cry when this reporter approached her, and said, “On Sunday, my nephew, Govinda Deshmukh from Khatyal village, had come take me to see a doctor because of a pain in my eye. The police suddenly came to my house and arrested him without explanation.”

Along with neighbours Kalubai Raut and Kalubai Choudhari, Akkabai and two other old women live in a part of the village that lies alongside the road on which the weekly market is convened every Sunday. Women in the village say the men in their respective families have run away out of fear of being arrested. Kalubai said, “We are not able to eat or sleep properly. We are not against the police arresting culprits, even if they are from our families. But arresting anyone and everyone without explanation is not right. That has caused the men in our village to run away”. The sitting sarpanch Bansilal Bhoye has also fled.

Rajubai Konkani, an anganwadi teacher in the village, whose husband has also been arrested by the police, said, “We both were working on the farm on Sunday and suddenly, the police came to arrest him in the evening. When he tried to ask the police why he was being hauled away, he was told, ‘Don’t talk too much’. His clothes were torn while he was being arrested.” The population of the village is over 700, but most of the village is deserted. It is only the elderly who can be seen lying in their homes, having not eaten since Sunday. Animals also run around the village hungry and thirsty.

M Ramkumar, superintendent of police, Dhule, is also shocked about the behaviour of the mob. “We received many videos of the incident and we have arrested only those who are seen beating people up in the videos. As of this point, we have arrested 23, who are in police custody till 6 July. We have identified 20 more people who were beating the victims and five of our search teams are trying to find them. A few of them have fled to the nearby states of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, but we will arrest them soon,” he said.

He added, “We want people to know that anybody who is not guilty won’t be arrested. We have held meetings with villagers and other departments to request villagers to come forward to tell us if they have any information. We have promised them that we will not arrest people. We have removed police deployment in a major way so as not to frighten people.”

Police also shocked

Ramkumar said, “The victims who are known for their good nature, have no criminal records. These victims would talk sweetly and respectfully with everybody as they live on favours from people. Why the villagers became so violent is still not understandable. They don’t even have a criminal history. We are questioning those who have been arrested. When we ask them why the beat up the victims, their response is that they did it because other people were also doing it. It beggars belief that one message on social media can cause such damage.”

He added, “This message about teams of kidnappers or burglars has been doing the rounds for the past month. And so, we had asked people to delete those messages and not share them. If people feel they have valuable inputs, they should reach out to the police. We have spread this message via newspapers, local cable channels and meetings with people. We have also hired artistes who go to villages to spread the message.”

Meanwhile, two witnesses Sakharam Pawar and Vishwas Gangurde, a gram panchayat member, who tried to stop people from lynching the victims are living in fear. Pawar said, “We feel that people in our villages and those nearby suspect that we are providing incorrect information to the police and might attack us. We want people to know that the police is deciding who is a criminal and who isn’t, based on the videos and other informants.”