In these Bihar villages, massacre wounds unhealed but water is new battlefront

Laxmanpur-Bathe village, where the soil still whispers the anguish of the 1997 massacre in which 58 Dalits were killed, lies trapped between horrors of its past and broken promises of its future. In the neighbouring village of Senari, where the scars of another massacre still linger, the tale of neglect finds a bitter resonance. On March 18, 1999, 34 upper-caste villagers - all Bhumihars - were slaughtered here, supposedly by Maoists to avenge the Laxmanpur-Bathe massacre.