When Public Servants Came Calling at Vachati

It is commendable that the Central Bureau of Investigation has been able to secure the convictions of 215 public servants for assault, including rape, of a community of 160 adivasis in Vachati village in Salem district of Tamil Nadu in June 1992. But it has not only taken close to two decades for the courts to deliver judgment, the atrocities themselves were reported only after three months. And had the Left not taken up the issue, the Madras High Court would not have handed the case to the CBI. Tragically, the perpetrators of other similar incidents in the same area and around the same time have gone unpunished.