Bangalore: "I will narrate everything as I saw it if the government gives me protection," said Saapala Gangalappa, one of the witnesses who turned hostile in the Kambalapalli Dalit massacre case of March 2000, in which seven persons were burnt to death.

The statement by 60-year-old Gangalappa, who was in Bangalore on Sunday to take part in a roundtable organised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), gave further strength to the demand for a retrial of the case.

Lack of evidence was cited as the reason for acquitting all the accused in the judgment of the Kolar District and Sessions Court in December 2006. Dalit organisations and other groups have been demanding retrial of the entire case, but the Government is yet to take any concrete steps in this direction.

Mr. Gangalappa said that he had seen people set fire to the house in which the seven Dalits were trapped and had said so in the first statement made to the police immediately after the incident.

But he had been threatened many times by "upper caste" people through the course of the trial that lasted six years, he alleged. Asked to name the people who threatened him, he said: "There are hundreds of people on their side. When I go back to the village the same people will ask me why I came here. Many people are scared to open their mouths even now." Mr. Gangalappa is a resident of "Mini" Kambalapalli, a village nearly 40 km away from the site of the carnage, where 66 Dalit families related to the victims were relocated following the killings.

B. Jagadeesh, a young man from the village who accompanied Mr. Gangalappa, said the Government was yet to meet several promises it made after the incident.

"Only 42 families have been given lands. That too one-and-a-quarter acres and not two acres as promised, he said.

Meeting Chief Minister

Mr. Gangalappa and the other residents of "Mini" Kambalapalli accompanying him hope to meet Social Welfare Minister Balachandra Jarkiholi, who did not turn up for the roundtable, and demand that the Government start a retrial, besides meeting all the promises made.

The roundtable, attended by Dalit leaders and intellectuals, resolved that they meet Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on the issue.

Maruti Manpade of Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha said that even the Rs. 4 crore grant released by the Centre for the welfare of the victims was not being utilised to help the victims.

Indudhar Honnapura of Dalit Sangharsh Samiti said that a high-power committee headed by the Chief Minister, which is meant to meet once in six months to discuss Dalit issues, had not met ever since Mr. Kumaraswamy took over.

Writer K. Marulasiddappa said that the absence of a moral outrage about the Kambalapalli massacre and the verdict was shocking. "Why is even the Opposition keeping quiet about it?" he asked.

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