A District court of Gaya on March 2, has awarded life imprisonment to the dreaded Kirani Yadav alias Ramchandra Yadav alias Suryadev Yadav in connection with the infamous Bara massacre in February 1992, where at least 35 people were brutally hacked to death by the members of proscribed Maoist Communist Centre.
District and Session Judge Manoj Tiwari, while holding Kirani guilty under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act – TADA along with Sections 302 and 307 of the Indian Penal Code, has also imposed a fine of Rs 3.05 lakh on the accused.
While expressing his dissatisfaction with the judgment, the counsel of the accused, Tariq Ali, said, “We were expecting the release of my client since he has spent nearly 17 years behind the bars. The order is against the principles of natural justice.”
More people were named in the massacre. However, my client’s trial was conducted separately; we are not satisfied with the judgment and look forward to challenging it before the supreme court, added Mr Tariq.
At the same time, public prosecutor Prashant Sinha has expressed his satisfaction with the judgment, “we respect the court’s verdict and feel satisfied by it, quoted Mr Sinha.
Bara Massacre
It should be noted that on the fateful night of February 12 1992, hundreds of Maoists belonging to the outlawed MCC had surrounded the Bara village (a village dominated by Upper castes) under the tikri police station limit of Gaya and set ablaze dozens of houses, following which all the male members of the village were paraded to the nearby canal with their hands tied with ropes.
The armed cadres of the MCC then ordered the men to fall in lines, following which all of them were brutally hacked to death with sharp weapons; local newspapers had counted the toll to 35 while a few of them had miraculously survived the massacre who later on turned witnesses in the trials. It was later reported that Kirani Yadav, the then-area commander of the MCC, had single-handedly killed at least 12 people by slitting their throats.
After the brutal killing at Bara, a total of 112 people, along with 350 unidentified persons, were named in the FIR, though only a handful of them have been so far convicted in the case; this includes Krishna Mochi, Veer Kunwar Paswan, Nanhe Lal Mochi and Dharmendra Singh who the court awarded capital punishment in 2001.
Later on, the capital punishments of the accused were converted to life imprisonment by the president of India.
It is to be noted that the state rose to the limelight in the late 80s for a series of caste-based massacres by the left-wing extremists (MCC) and retaliatory killings by outfits like Ranveer sena, these killings include brutal massacres at Dalel Chak – Bhageda, Senari, Lakshmanpur Bathe, Bara and many more.
