Sagar/Bhopal: On 26 May 2024, a 20-year-old arts student Anjana Ahirwar came out of the mortuary of the Bundelkhand Medical College into the punishing afternoon heat and quietly sat inside an ambulance.
She was taking her uncle’s body home to Barodia Naunagir village, in the eastern Madhya Pradesh district of Sagar, 150 km northeast of Bhopal, to perform the last rites.
Rajendra’s parents, Ramsevak Ahirwar, 60, and mother, Bhagwati, 52, locally known as Choti Bahu, sat next to the body inside the vehicle when the ambulance left the hospital.
A day earlier, men from a higher caste beat and stuck knives into her 24-year-old uncle, a daily-wage labourer, Rajendra Ahirwar, according to a police first information report (FIR) filed hours after the murderous attack.
Rajendra died of "multiple injuries sustained to the body and its complications", according to the autopsy report. He was the prime witness in the August 2023 murder of his 18-year-old nephew Nitin Ahirwar, Anjana’s younger brother. Thirteen people were accused in the case, five of them were Muslims and rest were from the Dangi Thakur (other backward caste community).
But Anjana did not survive to see her uncle’s last rites.
“We were mourning the loss of our son when police personnel offered water to drink, which made us sleepy,” Ramsevak told Article14. Within an hour, the Police woke Rajendra’s father near Khurai Bypass road informing him that Anjana ‘fell off’ the ambulance and died. “I woke up when a constable shook me awake.”
This was the third death in the family in less than four years, all related to a January 2019 case which Anjana had filed accusing higher caste landlords of harassing and assaulting her. The family is demanding a CBI probe in all three cases.
“She could not have jumped off the ambulance or killed herself,” Ramsevak told Article 14. “We were played in such a way that no one knows what happened except the police personnel who were accompanying us.”
Ramsevak alleged that the ambulance took a longer and a less crowded route.
Madhya Pradesh tops the country in cases of crime against Dalits (17%), tribals (22%), according to a 2023 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, the latest available data. Dalits and tribals accounted for 39% of the state’s population, according to the 2011 Census.
Madhya Pradesh is also among the top five states with the highest cases of crime against women and children.
“In one case, in Shivpuri district of MP, a Dalit was attacked for refusing to hand over a match box to the youth of an upper caste family,” Milind Wankhede, Madhya Pradesh High Court advocate and Dalit activist told Article 14.
Many cases of Dalit atrocities didn’t have a strong motive for the crime, but, owing to their “caste superiority complex”, the higher castes oppress Dalits over trivial issues like sitting next to them, riding horses, sporting mustaches, or using hand pumps meant for upper caste communities, he explained.
Madhya Pradesh’s conviction rate in such cases is limited to 35.9%, according to latest figures.
Where It All Began
Anjana was a second-year undergraduate student when she died. However, when she was 15 years old, she lodged an FIR against four Thakur men, including the family members of the present village sarpanch’s husband Vikram Singh, alleging harassment and assault. The accused were Azad Thakur, Pushpendra Thakur, Vishal Thakur and Chotu Raikwar.
The police, however, only lodged cases of assault invoking section 294, (does any obscene act in any public place) section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and section 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and section 3(1) (offense of atrocities), and section 3(2) (enhanced penalties) of The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
After Anjana’s death, on 21 June 2024, a team comprising eight members of civil societies, activists, lawyer and journalists visited Barodia Naunagir on a fact-finding mission.
The fact-finding report says that in the FIR lodged in January 2019, police invoked sections of assault, and relevant sections of the SC-ST Atrocities Act - 1989. But didn’t add the sections of the POCSO Act or harassment even though Anjana was only 15 years old at the time. This ensured that the accused was immediately released, it said.
Vikram's father Komal Thakur used to be the vidhyak pratinithi (MLA representative) of a senior BJP leader, Bhupendra Singh, who belongs to the same caste.
Anjana had told Article 14 that she had been under constant pressure to drop the case, and that she had refused to do so.
According to locals, the village saw a major shift in social equations around 2016-17, when a boy from Shabbir Khan’s family eloped with a girl belonging to Vikram Thakur’s caste. Both were affluent landlords. While the two families had a cordial relationship before that, confrontations began after the elopement.
Shabbir’s home was razed in late 2021, terming it illegal forcing the family to leave the village and settle in Rahatgarh town which is 20-km away from the village.
“Since Anjana’s family are acquainted with Imran’s family, they were provoking Nitin and others against us,” Vikash Thakur (24), a relative of Vikram told Article14.
On 12 July, the team released a 27-page report in Bhopal. The team comprising of lawyers, journalists and activists said that the “root cause of this violence had been the fact that a family of Dalit labourers dared to file an FIR against powerful 'landlords’ of the village and did not succumb to the pressure and threats to drop the case against them, actions which directly threatened their dominance and supremacy in the region.”
“It seems that the Sagar police and the Government are protecting the oppressors to suppress justice,” said Dharmendra Ahirwar, who is in-charge of Bhim Army, a Bahujan rights organisation, in Sagar.
The only police statement that claims that Anjana fell out of the ambulance is completely unbelievable, the fact-finding report said.
“We recorded the statements of people concerned and sent the mobile phone of Ajanja for the Forensic Science Laboratory test and the reports likely to be received within 8-10 days,” ASP Sanjeev Kumar Uikey told Article 14 on 15 July. “We will be able to take action after the FSL report’s findings reach us,” he added.
Sagar superintendent of police Abhiesk Tiwari and BJP leader Bhupendra Singh did not respond to requests for an interview.
Nitin’s Murder And Political Furore
After Anjana refused to withdraw her case against the Thakur men, they allegedly vandalized her family’s two-room mud home. The family said Anjana’s younger brother, Nitin, was enraged when he found out about the attack.
The FIR says he rushed to the marketplace with a sword to confront the Thakur men but was severely injured in the confrontation. When his mother, Badi Bahu, 55, rushed to rescue him, pleading for mercy, the assailants disrobed and attacked her with rods leading to a severe hand injury.
The police in Sagar, a city of 2.37 lakh people, lodged an FIR against 13 people on 24 August 2023 at the Khurai rural police station naming Vikram Thakur as the main perpetrator, his cousins and some others from the Muslim community.
The incident was predominantly reported by Article14 after Nitin’s murder last year.
Nitin had seven cases against him since 2019 under multiple sections of the IPC and the Arms Act 1959, including Section 294 (obscene acts), Section 323 ( voluntarily causing hurt), Section 452 (pertaining to house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault, or wrongful restraint), Section 506 (criminal intimidation), Section 457 (involving lurking house-trespass or house-breaking by night), Section 380 (for theft), and Section 25B of the Arms Act.
“The most intriguing part of police action is lodging multiple FIRs against Nitin who was a minor when murdered,” Nikita Sonavane, lawyer and co-founder of Bhopal-based Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (CPA Project) told Article 14.
A day after Nitin’s death, Anjana gave a written complaint to the police seeking the addition of Ankit Thakur in the FIR. Ankit, Vikram Thankur’s cousin, is a block level leader of the BJP. He is not named in the FIR.
The Other Brother
Vikram Thakur allegedly assaulted Anjana’s elder brother Vishnu Ahirwar (24) in a busy bus stand of the village in January 2019 and forced him to touch his feet to seek forgiveness. The fact-finding team said that they also came across the video of the incident in which Vishnu was being assaulted.
Later that day, police detained Vishnu in a complaint filed by Vikram Thakur. Vishnu’s family gave a written complaint to Sagar police asking why the police detained Vishnu without an FIR.
The district administration passed a six month externment order against Vishnu on 3 May 2024, two weeks before Rajendra and Anjajan’s death, referring to the cases lodged against Vishnu between 2020 to 2024 in Khurai Grameen police station and said he had become a threat to the law and order in the district.
“We haven’t found any case which shows that Vishnu is a threat to the society, or creating terror amongst the general public or breaching the public safety, peace and public order” the fact-finding report says.
Although he has returned to Sagar since, the police have a right to arrest him without notice.
“It is very easy for people from powerful castes to accuse Dalits and lodge cases against them and pressure the administration to pass an externment order on trivial and fabricated cases,” Vishnu told Article 14.
Rajendra’s death
Eight months after Nitin’s murder, on the night of 25 May 2024, Pappu Rajak, an associate of Vikram Thakur called Rajendra to his home.
The Ahirwar family said that the accused wanted to pressure Rajendra into signing a ‘compromise paper’. This is not legal but it's a common practice in case of caste atrocities. Subsequently, the complainant either withdraws the case or testifies in favour of the accused.
When Rajendra didn't bend to their terms, he was attacked by the family members of the accused who were in jail for their involvement in Nitin’s murder.
The FIR said that Rajendra was attacked with sharp weapons on the head and body at Pappu Rajak’s house. He was rushed to Bundelkhand Medical College, 60-km far from the village but the family was told that the Medical College was not equipped to treat his injuries. And he was referred to a hospital in Bhopal five hours later. He succumbed to the injuries mid-way, and the ambulance took the body back to Sagar.
Hours before her death, Anjana released a video and sent it to journalists, which Article 14 has seen. In the two-minute-long video, she says, “uncle Rajendra was a witness in the [Nitin case] 302 IPC murder case. Israel Khan, whose sons Golu and Lalu Khan, who are in jail, threatened him [Rajendra] to turn hostile and testify in their favour in Nitin’s murder case, and threatened to kill him if he did not do so …” She goes on to say that her uncle told her that they were attacking him.
The police had deployed men at Anjana’s house for security after Nitin died. But, in the midst of Lok Sabha polls, the security was withdrawn without notice, the family alleged. They also said that the CCTV camera had stopped recording around the same time.
Since Ramsevak is the complainant in Rajendra’s case the families fear that he might also be killed.
“The day they killed Nitin,” recalled Ramsevak, “they came looking for Rajendra to our home with an intent to kill him as well. When they found that he was away, they vandalized my mud-house and assaulted me with sticks, leading to a serious leg injury. I couldn’t walk for almost two months but didn’t report to the police, fearing backlash,” he said.
The accused in Rajendra’s murder haven’t been arrested until now. Instead the police lodged an FIR against the Rajendra on the evening of 26 May 2024 after his death, for attacking Pappu Rajak under sections 458, (lurking house-trespass or house-breaking by night after preparation for hurt, assault, or wrongful restraint) 294 (does any obscene act in any public place,), 307 (Attempt to murder), and 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.
Land ownership and caste
When Article14 visited the village with the fact-finding team, the locals claimed that the dalits as well as tribals of the village pass through the homes of upper caste families barefoot.
According to the fact-finding report, Vikram Singh Thakur’s family ownshundreds of acres of land in the area. Several Dalits and Adivasis work on those farms.
The Ahirwars own three acres of land on which they grow wheat, rice and soybean but since that is not enough to sustain themselves, they work on the farm lands of Vikram Thakur and his families. “Anyone who refuses to work on their agricultural land is considered a [criminal] and as a punishment their monthly ration, received under public distribution, was choked,” says the fact-finding report.
“Their expectation from Dalits is that we will bow down to them,” Anjana had told Article14 months before her death.
Politicians Swoop In
Chief minister Mohan Yadav met with the victim’s family and announced that a police post will be opened in the village to stop such incidents.
Priyanka Gandhi posted on X questioning the ruling BJP. Rahul Gandhi also spoke to the family and assured help.
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh spoke to media persons sitting next to Anjana’s body and later took part in her funeral. “The administration promised to give Anjana a government job, did they give her one? ” he asked.
After Nitin’s death last year, prominent leaders from the Dalit community, including Mayawati and Mallikarjun Kharge, as well as Kamal Nath spoke to the family and extended their support.
(Kashif Kakvi is a multimedia journalist who covers Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Rohit Shivhare is an independent reporter from Madhya Pradesh.)
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