Vachati Mass Rape

On 20 June 1992 in the village of Vachathi, in Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu, a team of 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen and six revenue officials gang raped 18 women and girls some of them as young as 13 years. They had entered the village under the excuse of searching the houses for illegal sandal wood smuggling racket run by Veerappan with tacit coopérations by the tribals of the village.

Vachathi is a village located in Dharmapuri district, 300 km (190 mi) away from the state capital Chennai. During June 1992, the villagers, who were mostly tribals, prevented forest and revenue officials from entering the hamlet. The officials complained that the villagers were involved in sandalwood smuggling and aiding Veerappan, a notorious forest brigand. During the evening, 269 officials, being 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen and six revenue officials, raided the village and herded the villagers under a tree. A hundred men from the village were brutally assaulted while 18 women were gangraped. The raid continued for two days when the hamlet was demolished. Only those who had sought refuge on the nearby mountains and forests could be spared from the plight. They returned to their homes after spending days there without food and water.

The victims pleaded innocence but the culprits paid no heeds to their supplications and took the women and girls to a secluded place at the pond and took turns to rape each of them multiple times. One of the survivors of trauma who was just 13 years at the time pleaded to the cruel culprits to spare her as she being so young won't be able to forebear the plight. But the undeterred criminals went ahead with their malicious designs and took turns in raping her multiple times. After she was done with she still pleaded to the culprits to be let go as she was a schoil going child but to no use.

Police were not ready to accept the case for three years and the then state minister K. A. Sengottaiyan commented that the villagers were aiding sandalwood smuggling.[6] The villagers were denied compensation for a long time. On 12 September 2014, the state government offered a compensation of ₹12.2 lakh to all the victims. An additional ₹60,000 was allocated to each of the 105 villagers who were drafted in the chargesheet filed in 1999. The chargesheet was quashed by the court during November 2012.

The victims are still waiting for justice to be done in their case. The trial was held at Dharmapuri Principal District Court. There were 269 accused in the case that had 155 forest personnel, 108 policemen, and six revenue officials. All the 269 who were accused were sentenced on 29 September 2011. Of the 269, 54 died during the trial. Of the remaining 215, 126 belonged to the forest department, 84 were policemen, and five were revenue officials. Out of the 17 rapists, 12 were sentenced to 17 years imprisonment and 5 had 5 years. The rest of the accused were sentenced to one to two years in prison.