The sprawling banyan tree of Vachathi and the now-defunct well, some metres away, had borne witness that late afternoon on June 20, 1992, when a joint force of the Forest-, Police- and the Revenue Deparments descended on the Malayali tribal village at the foothills of Sitheri Hills in Harur in Dharmapuri district, in an ostensible “crackdown on sandalwood logging”. The raid left in its wake, a trail of gendered violence, with the rape of 18 tribal girls and the pillage of a village.
The events of June 20, 1992 and their aftermath in Vachathi, would set in motion a three -decade long battle for justice for the women and the village, one that would culminate in the conviction of 215 personnel of Forest-, Revenue- and Police Departments, who had participated in the raid.
On September 29, 2023, when Justice P. Velmurugan read the 78 page verdict upholding the 2011 trial court verdict convicting 215 men of the Forest-, Revenue- and Police Departments of rape and pillage in Vachathi, it threw two issues into the limelight, by denying them: the impunity enjoyed by the State apparatus under the cover of official duty and the patriarchal diktat of the rape survivors’ silence and shame.
