More than three years after it shot to national infamy for the lynching of four members of a Dalit family, the village has won an award for settling disputes peacefully.
More than three years after it shot to national infamy for the lynching of four members of a Dalit family, Khairlanji village in Bhandara district of Maharashtra is back in the news, this time for a good reason.
The state government has conferred on the village the Rs1 lakh award under the Tanta-Mukta Abhiyaan (dispute settlement campaign), a scheme being implemented since 2007 across the state by the home department to honour villages that find peaceful out-of-court settlement for non-cognizable disputes.
The cash prize was awarded on April 1 to the village committee, which scored 164 marks out of a maximum 200, according to Sanjay Shirbhate, inspector at the Andhalgaon police station in whose jurisdiction the village falls.
Khairlanji is one of 125 villages in Bhandara district to win the award.
The village, Shirbhate said, amicably settled 10 out of 11 major disputes referred to the committee by the Andhalgaon police station during the fiscal year 2008-09.
The village also announced complete prohibition of liquor and tobacco, and executed sanitation and cleanliness drives to bring about reforms to lift itself up from social ills after living in the shadow of the police for three years.
A small police chowky has still been retained in the village since the case of the Bhotmange family is in the high court.
On September 29, 2006, four members of the family — Surekha Bhotmange and her three children, Sudhir, 21, Roshan, 18, and Priyanka, 17 — were done to death by an irate mob of villagers over a protracted dispute, leading to violent protests across the state.
The government had instituted an inquiry by the criminal investigation department of the state police. The case was later handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation for a thorough probe.
In 2008, out of the 11 accused, eight were convicted; six of them were awarded the death penalty while two were sentenced to life in prison by a special court in Bhandara.
The convicts have moved the Bombay high court against the special court’s verdict. The lone survivor, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, lives in Bhandara and works as a guard at a government boys’ hostel.
The Khairlanji village council expressed its desire to participate in the Tanta-Mukta scheme in 2008 after languishing in isolation after the gory incident.
“The very fact that the village came forward to participate in the Tanta-Mukta Abhiyaan was significant,” Shweta Khedkar, sub-divisional police officer of Mohadi, said.
“We decided to implement the scheme like any other programme of the government; we couldn’t discriminate against the entire village for the 2006 incident,” she said. A team of officers evaluated the performance of the village, just as is done for all other villages that participate in the programme.
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