Nawada (Bihar): Lakshminiya Devi was cooking dal one evening in her ramshackle mud-and-brick hut in Bihar’s Dedaur village, when she was startled by the sound of a gunshot.
Before she knew it, a group of armed men firing in the air had burnt down 34 of 80 houses in her Dalit tola or colony in Nawada district, leaving more than 50 desperately poor families without a roof over their heads.
It’s been more than 10 days since their houses were reduced to ashes over a decades-old land dispute, but the traumatised Dalit families are still living in fear — without a clue about when their lives will return to normal.
Around 200 people have been living under constant surveillance in cramped tarpaulin tents the district administration has set up not far from their charred homes in the village ringed by coconut trees.
Many of them only had the set of clothes they were wearing when their houses — along with their goats and hens as well as stored grains — went up in flames. More than a dozen houses were also damaged.
“I have not gone out anywhere after the incident. I am still afraid that someone might attack me,” said daily wage labourer Siya Ravidas.
“Life changed suddenly. Houses were burnt by using petrol. There were about 150 people who surrounded the settlement from all sides,” he added, pointing to people’s scattered belongings in the burnt houses.
Reminders of the deadly 18 September blaze that destroyed their homes are everywhere: Blackened remains of walls, burnt cots and carts, cycles and ash-covered aluminum utensils strewn in the debris.
“We have to see these burnt houses every day. This is painful for us. A house is built with a lot of hard work and today we are all forced to live in government tents,” said 59-year-old Lakshminiya Devi, who also lost her home in the fire.
Living in cramped tents
Most of the residents of Dedaur village who lost their homes are daily wage labourers already struggling to make ends meet.
Now, they have no homes, and no work either.
Living in cramped temporary tents has only added to their woes.
Villagers complain about the administration’s arrangements as most of them sleep on the ground in the heat with just 18 wooden cots and 10 fans for 200 people.
They say more than a dozen leaders and social workers have visited and left after assuring them about compensation and their land rights.
But nothing has changed on the ground.
“We sleep on the mats spread on the uneven ground. Many people have fallen ill after sleeping on the floor,” says Chanda Devi, a woman in her forties who lost everything and is now wearing a saree provided by the administration.
At 9 am, she is still waiting for breakfast provided by the government. “We get chuda (flattened rice) and milk for breakfast, but today we did not get even that,” she says.
Another villager who lost her home, Lalita Devi, remembers how she and her family had to sleep on the road after the fire as the administration only made arrangements late at night.
Villagers sitting down for a meal are concerned about their future. At the moment, they are virtually imprisoned in their colony. People cannot leave without permission and no outsider is allowed to enter the Dalit colony.
More than 100 security personnel, including police and special forces, have been camping in every nook and corner of the village.
The only major difference in the village where people lived in darkness for decades is the solar lights and LED bulbs installed in the colony after Nawada MP Vivek Thakur’s visit on 26 September.
Compensation
Villagers say the attack was just aimed at taking over the land and all they want is to return to their homes.
The local administration has given the 34 affected families a cheque of Rs 1.05 lakh each in compensation.
But the people are not satisfied. They want ownership of the land to be given to them.
“Hamein jameen ka parcha chahiye (We want the land papers). Otherwise, such incidents will keep happening. If we get the land papers, we will also get the benefit of all government schemes,” said Lalita Devi, who is in her forties.
At present, the people of this Dalit colony can’t avail the benefits of many government schemes because they don’t have land papers.
Earthen stoves in all houses suggest the families don’t have gas cylinders under the government’s Ujjwala Yojana, a scheme that aims to provide LPG gas connections to people below the poverty line.
It has been about five days since people received compensation from the government, but instead of repairing their houses, some are using the money on their health first.
“I have not bought anything with that money yet. My health is deteriorating; so it is being spent on that,” said Lakshminia Devi.
She added that she had taken a loan of Rs 5,000 for her treatment but it was burnt in the fire.
People may be unhappy with the compensation, but police said the land dispute that went back about three decades could only be resolved by the courts.
“The case is still pending in the munsif court. Our job is to protect them so they do not face any trouble again. It is the job of the court and the government to settle them and make decisions,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.
Police said they had no information about how many days they had to camp there to protect the Dalit settlement.
The government says it is taking strict action in the case.
“The culprits are being arrested. Immediate relief work is being done for the victims. Strict action will be taken against whoever is involved,” said Janak Ram, Bihar’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe Welfare Department Minister.
Police have arrested 22 people including the main accused, Nandu Paswan, a resident of Pran Bigha village, about two kilometers from the Dalit settlement.
Police on Thursday registered a complaint for rioting, theft, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation under the Arms Act, 1959, and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Paswan’s daughter-in-law, Sarita Bharti says they owned the land that had been occupied. “We have the land papers for which we also get rent receipts.”
Nawada Superintendent of Police Abhinav Dhiman has admitted to a failure of intelligence and formed a special investigation team to probe the incident.
Decades-old land dispute
Bihar has a long history of caste-based conflicts but the Nawada incident is different as it involves two groups from the same community attacking each other.
The Dalit settlement in Nawada consists of people from the Manjhi and Ravidas communities who account for over 8 percent of Bihar’s population.
The conflict stems from a complicated land dispute. The Mahadalits in Nawada have been living on the land for decades, but another group, including the Paswans, claims it as their own.
Villagers whose homes have been burnt say the little over 15 acres of land belongs to the government and they have been living on it since 1964.
“This land used to be a pit earlier. Our ancestors made it habitable,” says 23-year-old Vyas Muni, sitting on a cot in a temporary tent.
“Actually, this land belongs to the Bihar government but we have been in possession of it for decades and we have been living here,” he adds.
According to the villagers, the land originally belonged to Razia Begum, a nawab’s daughter, after whose death it became the property of the Bihar government and is called Anabad Bihar government land.
The ownership dispute began when some villagers filed a title suit case in the Nawada munsif court in 1995.
It’s been 29 years since then but there’s been no resolution so far.
Four months ago, the case inched forward a bit when the court ordered the measurement of the land but there’s been no headway on that so far.
“The suit is 29 years old and pending at the stage of final argument since 2009,” the court observed.
Vyas Muni, whose family had filed the case, said some people made incorrect land records, or khatian, around 1980, got the land mutated and started selling it.
He claims 10 of the 15 acres have been sold by forgery.
Officials said people were staking claims to their land and trying to take possession of their lands across Bihar before a land survey and digitisation of land records exercise by the government.
Ever since the news of the land digitisation process spread in Bihar, the people have been queuing before the land department to verify their records.
Until now, ownership was mostly informal as the plots were handed over to the next generations of families without proper documentation.
“Those who had bought this land felt that if the land was not occupied before the survey and these Dalits were not removed, then the land would never be acquired. And in this hurry, they committed such a big crime,” said a government official at the camp.
Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union general secretary Chintu Kumari earlier told ThePrint that the ongoing land survey in Bihar triggered the incident.
“The mafia has become active. They want to remove the poor from the land, but this is not new,” he said.
Villagers said the attack was a deliberate attempt to take away the Dalit community’s land since the ‘mafia’ had attacked villagers earlier, as well, asking them to empty their houses.
Muni said some people opened fire on their colony last year and residents filed a complaint in the police station.
“But no action was taken at that time. Since then, we have been living in fear and now such a big incident has happened. Ye to shukra hai ki log bach gaye (It is a blessing that people survived),” said Muni.
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Political accusations
Meanwhile, political allegations and counter-allegations are flying thick and fast at both the state and national levels.
With assembly elections due in Bihar next year, many political leaders from Chirag Paswan to Jitan Ram Manjhi have highlighted this issue and have even visited the village.
Tejashwi Yadav, Leader of Opposition in the Bihar assembly, slammed Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a post on X, saying atrocities against Dalits would not be tolerated.
“Maha jungle raj (reign). Demon raj…. There is fire all over Bihar under the rule of Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is carefree. NDA allies are unaware! The poor burn and die — what do they care? Atrocities on Dalits will not be tolerated,” Yadav wrote.
महा जंगलराज! महा दानवराज! महा राक्षसराज!
नवादा में दलितों के 100 से अधिक घरों में लगायी आग।
नरेंद्र मोदी और नीतीश कुमार के राज में बिहार में आग ही आग।
मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश कुमार बेफिक्र, NDA के सहयोगी दल बेख़बर! गरीब जले, मरे-इन्हें क्या? दलितों पर अत्याचार बर्दाश्त नहीं होगा।…
— Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) September 18, 2024
Tejashwi Yadav sent a seven-member committee led by former speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary to visit the spot.
At the same time, Jitan Ram Manjhi — head of the the Hindustani Awam Morcha who also visited the spot — is cornering the Yadav community on this incident.
He accused the dominant Yadav community of being behind the entire incident by putting people from the SC community forward.
Bihar Congress President Akhilesh Prasad Singh wrote a letter to Governor Rajendra Arlekar on 26 September demanding a land lease for the homeless families, a daily allowance for three months and compensation of Rs 10 lakh.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has been in power for about two decades, has repeatedly said that 60 percent of the crimes in the state are due to land disputes.
Land is a sensitive subject in feudal Bihar where mostly landless Scheduled Castes account for 19.65 percent of the population, according to the 2023 caste survey.
The Manjhi and Ravidas communities belong to the Mahadalit category of Bihar’s 22 poorest Dalit groups created by the Nitish government in 2007.
National leaders also raised the issue.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X that burning down an entire colony of Mahadalits in Nawada and destroying the houses of more than 80 families highlights “the horrifying picture of injustice against the Bahujans in Bihar”.
“Such anarchist elements find shelter under the leadership of BJP and its NDA allies – they intimidate and suppress the Bahujans of India so that they cannot even demand their social and constitutional rights,” he said in a post on X.
नवादा में महादलितों का पूरा टोला जला देना, 80 से ज़्यादा परिवारों के घरों को नष्ट कर देना बिहार में बहुजनों के विरुद्ध अन्याय की डरावनी तस्वीर उजागर कर रहा है।
अपना घर-संपत्ति खो चुके इन दलित परिवारों की चीत्कार और भयंकर गोलीबारी की गूंज से वंचित समाज में मचा आतंक भी बिहार की…
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 19, 2024
Congress President Mallikarjun described the incident as another proof of the ” jungle raj of the NDA double engine government”.
Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati also condemned the incident seeking strict legal action against the culprits.
In her post on X, she asked the government to provide full financial help for the rehabilitation of the victims.
बिहार के नवादा में दबंगों द्वारा गरीब दलितों के काफी घरों को जलाकर राख करके उनका जीवन उजाड़ देने की घटना अति-दुखद व गंभीर। सरकार दोषियों के खिलाफ सख्त कानूनी कार्रवाई करने के साथ ही पीड़ितों को पुनः बसाने की व्यवस्था के लिए पूरी आर्थिक मदद भी करे।
— Mayawati (@Mayawati) September 19, 2024
As politics takes over, the people of Nawada village are frustrated.
Ramjeet Manjhi stands near the burnt brick wall of his house almost with an air of resignation.
“Takleef to gareeb ko hi hota hai. Har koi raaton raat beghar ho gya (The poor are the ones who really suffer. Everyone has become homeless overnight),” says Ramjeet.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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