In 1999, seventeen Dalit tea estate workers drowned in the Thamirabarani River while fleeing a brutal police assault in Tirunelveli. Decades later, the official response remains a study in institutional impunity.
Three decades after a joint force of forest, police, and revenue officials raided a tribal hamlet in Dharmapuri, the Madras High Court's affirmation of their convictions exposes the mechanics of state impunity.
In 1968, forty-four Dalit agricultural labourers were locked in a hut and burned alive in Kizhavenmani for demanding a wage increase. The subsequent High Court acquittal of the landlords established a pattern of institutional impunity.