A member of Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS) narrates the Arwal incident, in Bihar

From the archive record

An eye witness of the Arwal incident narrates the whole episode to a member of Indian People's Human Rights Tribunal. The 23 peasants taken down by the police in the Bihar town of Arwal 11 months ago will not, it seems, be buried as just another statistic in the state's bloody history of communal and caste violence. The tragedy has shaken hundreds of ordinary citizens and compelled lawyers and students, teachers and journalists, jurists and artists - and even company executives - to form a body called the Indian People's Human Rights Commission. Determined to exert "more pressure" against atrocities committed by governments, the commission has chosen Arwal as its first symbolic battleground. Last fortnight, almost 2,000 peasants crammed the site of the killing to witness survivors perform