By Munibar Barui
On July 12, 2021 the Supreme Court gave an official approval to hear the Government of Bihar’s request against the exoneration by Patna High Court in May of 14 suspects in the Senari massacre of 1999. On May 17, 2021 the Patna High Court acquitted 14 accused persons in the Senari massacre case in which 34 persons were killed on March 18, 1999 by a former Maoist group (MCC) in Senari village in central Bihar.
On November 15, 2016 Additional District Judge-III of the Jehanabad District Court had sentenced death penalty to 10 suspects and 3 were sentenced to life imprisonment to. However, around 23 accused persons were acquitted due to lack of evidence by the district court and 4 others who were accused had died.
In current context, on May 17, 2021 a Division Bench of the Patna High Court, comprising Justices Ashwani Kumar Singh and Arvind Srivastava discharged the lower court’s order and acquitted all 13 accused persons of Senari massacre case due to lack of evidence. So, the Government of Bihar has now appealed to the Supreme Court of India to further look into the matter.
Nonetheless, this brings us to the question that: What was Senari Massacre of 1999?On March 18, 1999, around 34 higher caste men were defenestrated out of their homes in Senari village of Jehanabad district. This was done by teams of the now non-operational Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).These 34 individuals were murdered near the village temple.The Senari massacre was said to be a consequence of the Laxamanpur-Bathe massacre in which 57 Dalits were killed in 1997. Of the 91 massacres between 1977 and 2000, 76 took place between 1990 and 2000, in which over 350 people were murdered. The districts of central Bihar i.e., Gaya, Jehanabad, Aurangabad and the Shahabad region of Bhojpurhad faced the most adverse situations due to the on-going aforementioned massacre in that time period.