NAGPUR: Since a Bhandara court awarded death penalty to six and life imprisonment to two accused for allegedly killing four members of a dalit family, an uneasy silence has engulfed Khairlanji village.

Speaking to DNA, Neeraj Khandewale, one of the defence lawyers, has stated that the kin of all the eight convicts have given up eating since the courts verdict. "On Thursday morning, wife of one of the convicts telephoned me. Crying inconsolably, she asked me when would her husband be given death punishment," he said.

This was the first time a member of any of the convicts families had contacted, though reluctantly, a defence lawyer since the court pronounced the verdict in the case on September 15.

"She hardly knew anything about the judicial process. She was crying because she thought it is the end of the road for her and her family," said Khandewale.

When the court was pronouncing the sentence, a huge crowd in support of the victims families had gathered outside the court in anticipation of maximum punishment.

However, no one was by the side of the convicts, either landless or marginal farmers.
"Its an irony that many of the close relatives distanced themselves from the families of the convicts in Khairlanji," said Khandewale.

Even the news of acquittal of three of the 11 accused had reached their families only when they went home the next day. "That was because all of them are equally poor. If they start worrying about their relatives, who will feed them?" a villager said. A police posse guards Khairlanji and does not allow any outsider to enter the village.
Source : DNA