A court in India has sentenced three men to death for the 1981 murder of 24 people from the Dalit (formerly untouchable) community.
The men were part of a gang of bandits who shot the victims, including women and children, in Dehuli village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The special court said on Tuesday that the killings fell into the “rarest of the rare” category, which justifies capital punishment in India.
The men, who insist they are innocent, can appeal against the sentence in a higher court.
All the victims were from the Dalit community, which sits at the bottom of India’s rigid caste hierarchy.
Relatives of the victims have welcomed the sentence but say the decision should have come earlier.
“Justice came very late to us. The accused have lived their lives,” said Sanjay Chaudhry, whose cousin was killed in the firing.
Thirteen of the 17 men accused in the case have died in the 44 years since the crime was committed. Apart from the three men who have been sentenced to death, there is one more accused, who is absconding.
The crime took place on 18, 1981, when 17 men—most of them from the upper caste—wearing police uniforms stormed Dehuli and started shooting at villagers.
According to the police complaint registered at the time, the violence followed the murder of a Dalit member of the robbers’ gang by his upper-caste colleagues. The gang members then attacked the village because they suspected that some Dalit villagers were providing information to the police in the murder case.
The survivors of the massacre have vivid memories of the day.
“I was doing household chores when suddenly the firing started,” says Rakesh Kumar, a witness who was a teenager at the time.
“I was hiding behind a stack of paddy, and when I came out, I saw that many people, including my mother, were shot,” he said.
Mr Kumar’s mother, Chameli Devi, now 80, was hit by a bullet in her leg while running from the gunfire.
“They did not spare anyone, including women or children,” she said. “Whoever they found was killed.”
The firing lasted for more than four hours, and the attackers fled the scene before the police arrived, according to media reports.
The crime led to an exodus of Dalits from Dehuli, and the local administration sent police personnel to the village, where they stayed for months in a bid to reassure people. It also triggered a political uproar, and then prime minister Indira Gandhi had visited Dehuli to meet the victims.
In 1984, the case was transferred from a district court to the Allahabad Sessions Court on the orders of the state’s high court. The trial continued there on and off until 2024, when the case was shifted to the special court in Mainpuri, which found the men guilty.
It’s not unusual for courts in India to take decades to finish hearing a case and deliver a verdict, especially when the victims are from disadvantaged communities. In 2023, a 90-year-old man was sentenced for life in prison for a caste crime that also took place in 1981.
