By V Venkatesan
NEW DELHI: On 14 May 2015, five Dalit men were killed in collective violence at Dangawas village in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district. Several others were injured. Homes and property had been damaged and burnt.
More than 11 years later, a Rajasthan court said it had no doubt that the violence at Dangawa had occurred.
Yet not one of the 40 men prosecuted for it could be convicted.
Special judge Ashish Bijarnia summed up the outcome in his 5 August 2026 judgment in a sentence that captures the failure at the centre of the case: “The occurrence is proved; the perpetrators are not proved.”
The court described what happened at the disputed field in Dangawas, in Nagaur district, as “heinous and heart-rending collective violence” in which five people from the complainant side died, and many were seriously injured. It said it had never doubted that the violence occurred.
The Dangawas families waited more than 11 years through an investigation first by the Rajasthan police, then by India’s premier federal investigative agency, the central bureau of Investigation, the CBI, only to reach a judgment in which the court could say with certainty that the violence occurred but could not hold one person criminally responsible for the five deaths beyond reasonable doubt through legally admissible evidence.
The Rajasthan police investigated first. Nineteen days later, the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, took over.
The judgment records that neither agency carried out some of the most basic investigative steps needed in a case involving a large crowd and disputed identification.
Neither the Rajasthan Police nor the CBI conducted a basic identification parade; no DNA or ballistic examination was carried out; a tractor central to the prosecution’s strongest allegation was never objectively linked to the accused said to have driven it; and crucial evidence needed to prove recoveries and some serious injuries could not be used at trial.
Deaths On Both Sides
The violence arose from a decades-old dispute over 23 bighas and five biswas of agricultural land.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.