Police lobbed several teargas shells and lathi-charged demonstrators as protests against last week’s killings of four members of a Dalit family turned violent.

The four Dalits were killed on September 29 in Khairlanji village of Bhandara district, some 100 km from here.

Today’s protests here saw nearly 40 vehicles, including that of an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) and those of two journalists, torched in the Indora and Wadi areas. A police chowki was also set ablaze.

Fifteen protesters were arrested.

Among the targets was the office of Nitin Raut, the Congress MLA from North Nagpur, a Dalit himself and among the first to visit the village and condemn the killings, allegedly by upper-caste Hindus.

Four members of the Bhotmange family— a woman, her two sons, and a daughter— had been killed over a long-standing land dispute. The head of the family, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, fled to save his life.

It is alleged that the woman, Surekha Bhotmange, had taken on the villagers with the help of one Siddharth Gajbhiye, a relative and police patil from the neighbouring Dhusala village, over the issue of the villagers’ demand to have a right of way through Bhiyyalal’s farm. Gajbhiye had a fight with a villager over some money dispute, following which the villagers had beaten him up.

The Bhotmanges had given testimony in the assault case, leading to arrests of some villagers. This so enraged the villagers that they first looked around for Siddharth, but on not finding him, turned on the Bhotmanges.

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