Human sacrifice, blood offerings, greed for gold: Why the 1970s Manwat murders continue to shock

The Supreme Court could not contain its horror when it delivered its final verdict about the brutal murders. It was a “gruesome story”, the judges said, driven by “horrid avarice” and entailed “heartless executions of evil ends”.

The 10 slayings in Manwat, a town in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, in the early 1970s involved human sacrifice, blood offerings to a folk deity and a hunt for long-lost treasure. The faces of some of the victims had been disfigured to prevent their remains from being easily identified. Among the dead was a 10-year-old girl, who had been beheaded.

The phantasmagorical quality of the killings, not surprisingly, has attracted the attention of filmmakers over the decades. This extreme instance of occult practice inspired Saravasakshi in 1978 and Akriet in 1981. In October, a streaming series titled Manvat Murders will revisit the killings from the point of view of the main police investigator. The Sony LIV show, directed by Ashish Bende, stars Ashutosh Gowariker as the police officer.

In Manwat, when the police finally sent the case to court, the main accused were Rukhmini, a woman from a tribal community, and Uttamrao Barahate, her married upper-caste lover. Rukhmini, who was in her early 30s at the time, was unable to menstruate and bear children. Uttamrao was tempted by the gold rumoured to be buried under a peepul tree. Lashed to the tree, locals believed, was Munjya, the mean spirit of a boy who had died after undergoing a thread ceremony but before getting married.

According to the police, a shaman named Ganpat Salve persuaded Rukhmini and Uttamrao that Munjya could be appeased only by human sacrifice – offerings of human blood would not only revitalise Rukhmini’s child-bearing abilities but also cause the golden treasure to gush forth. Rukhmini and Uttamrao hired men to carry out the killings, which continued even after the police investigation began.

The Marathi show based on the murders is adapted from a chapter in a book by former Maharashtra Director General of Police Ramakant Kulkarni, Footprints on the Sands of Crime.

But 24 years before Kulkarni’s memoir, an even more detailed account of the crime appeared in a book by Mumbai lawyer Rajguru Deshmukh. The first hint of the grisly contents of The Manwat Murders is provided on the cover: an axe dripping blood.

A gruesome trail of blood

Deshmukh was around 30 in 1977 when he wrote The Manwat Murders, said his childhood friend Rajendra Pai, a senior advocate in the Bombay High Court. “Rajguru was fascinated with the murders – he spoke to the advocates involved with the case and also looked at the legal papers,” Pai told Scroll. “He was very studious. Once he took up a task, he would do everything to make it a success.”

In his preface, Deshmukh explains that he wrote The Manwat Murders to give “an inkling into the havoc that results when false beliefs are entertained with fanatical zeal”. He travelled to Manwat, where he met and photographed Rukhmini. However, the book does not contain an interview with Rukhmini. It focuses instead on the folkloric beliefs prevalent in Manwat, the role of the police and the court proceedings.

“The central figure of this gruesome drama is not any of the accused persons, the victims, nor the police officers who investigated the crime,” Deshmukh says. “At every stage of the drama, what emerges supreme is a character by the name of SUPERSTITION.”

The murders took place between November 14, 1972, and January 4, 1976. The first victim was a 10-year-old girl. Like with the victims that followed, blood was extracted from her private parts and offered to the spirit Munjya in a German steel bowl, Deshmukh writes, quoting from the police files. (The foul-tempered ghost is also the antagonist of Aditya Sarpotdar’s recently released blockbuster Munjya).

After the initial sacrifices of pre-pubertal girls did not yield the desired results, Salve demanded blood from menstruating women, but this did not work either.

Yet, the killing spree continued. By the time the police arrested Uttamrao, Rukhmini and Rukhmini’s sister Samindri in 1973, seven girls and women had been killed. In 1974, another woman and her two daughters, one of them only a year old, were hacked to death in a ploy to convince the police that the three people in custody were not the real conspirators, Deshmukh writes.

A greed for treasure

Deshmukh’s book includes a written account by Ramakant Kulkarni, which the police officer later adapted for his memoir. (Kulkarni’s daughter is marketing consultant and writer Anita Bhogle, wife of cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle.)

Kulkarni recalls that he was with the Criminal Investigation Department in Mumbai when he was deputed to Manwat along with his deputies VV Vakatkar and NM Waghmare.

Seven deaths had already taken place. The police received an anonymous letter that pointed a finger at Uttamrao.

Kulkarni writes about making bricks with scattered pieces of clay – the manner in which he galvanised the demoralised local constabulary, chased down clues and navigated past obstacles in an unfamiliar, hostile environment.

The hunt put the focus on the community to which Rukhmini belonged: the Pardhis. Unjustly classified as a “criminal tribe” during British rule, the Pardhis are still oppressed for their nomadic culture, hunting skills, and their distinctive modes of communication typical of a disadvantaged group but which are deemed by outsiders to be “secretive”.

In Manwat, Deshmukh and Kulkarni write, the Pardhis lived on the margins, surviving by brewing hooch or resorting to occasional theft for Uttamrao. A former municipal councillor, 54-year-old Uttamrao had been sacked from his position because of malpractices, Deshmukh writes. Uttamrao began to make illicit liquor. The operation was supervised by Rukhmini and employed several members of her Pardhi community.

However, despite the efforts of the police, the Manwat investigation ran into unexpected legal hurdles. Rajguru Deshmukh reveals how the apparently watertight case dissolved when it reached the courtroom.

The prosecution case falls apart

Although Rukhmini and Uttamrao were convicted by the sessions court, they were acquitted by the High Court in 1976 because the conspiracy charge against them could not be proved. The High Court also let off Rukhmini’s sister Samindri, who recanted her confession that she had participated in the conspiracy.

In 1977, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal but convicted the men who actually carried out the murders. Four of them were hanged in 1979.

Deshmukh’s chronicle was published before the Supreme Court verdict. Despite Deshmukh’s personal conviction about the role played by superstition, his book leaves its conclusion about the guilt of Rukhmini and Uttamrao open-ended.

Deshmukh backs the broad theory that Rukhmini and Uttamrao ordered the murders because they were motivated by black magic. A contributing factor was the stark class divide in Manwat: most residents were too poor to stand up to wealthy, politically connected individuals such as Uttamrao.

The story that gold was buried in Manwat had long roots, Deshmukh says. Locals believed that the treasure had been hidden away in the sixteenth century, during the time of the Ahmednagar Sultanate.

Deshmukh’s book takes a new turn when he puts on his legal hat.

He finds merit in the arguments of the defence, which pointed to contradictory statements, unreliable witness testimonies and dodgy material evidence. For instance, the police claimed that the accused had inexplicably held on to incriminating pieces of blood-stained rags and knives for months after the murders.

In addition, the accused told the courts that their confessions had been made under torture and threats of sexual violence, Deshmukh reports.

The prosecution was unable to prove the culpability of Rukhmini, Uttamrao and Samindri, who were held to be the main conspirators.

“The judges held that there was no doubt that ten ghastly, brutal murders had been committed,” Deshmukh writes. “But was there any proof under the law that these murders were committed at the instance of Rukhmini?”

The High Court’s acquittals of Rukhmini, Uttamrao and Samindri were endorsed by the Supreme Court in 1977. In its ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the testimonies of two of the accused men who had turned approver, including the “mountebank” Ganpat Salve.

The three-judge bench criticised the delay in preventing further deaths. The Supreme Court was also incensed by allegations that the police had pressurised the local bar association to deny representation to the accused.

In his memoir, Ramakant Kulkarni is nonplussed at the acquittal. He writes:

“A conspiracy is, more often than not, conceived in secrecy and executed in darkness. Any one who shares the knowledge of the conspiracy has to satisfactorily explain how he came to be present at exclusive meetings and secret deliberations Ordinarily, such a person becomes an accomplice and should he turn approver his evidence comes to be viewed with suspicion. If he is treated as an accused he has, of course, the right to silence. How does one get over this problem?”

The Manwat movies

The Manwat killing were so mindboggling, it is not suprising that cinema has long tried to make sense of them – as well as deliver the justice that was seemingly denied by the courts.

In 1978, Ramdas Phutane’s Marathi film Sarvasakshi addressed the issues at the core of the Manwat murders. Phutane’s debut feature is a sobering study of how rationality is overcome by greed – for treasure, for children.

Ravi (Jairam Hardikar) is an idealistic schoolteacher whose crusade against superstition annoys a local spiritual leader. When Ravi’s wife Rekha (Anjali Paigankar) consults a practitioner of black magic after failing to become pregnant, the events set in motion scar Ravi too.

A goat or rooster will not do, I need a human, a “two-eyed coconut”, to satisfy Munjya, the occultist declares. Smita Patil plays a progressive local who supports Ravi.

Sarvasakshi was written by Bhaskar and Meena Chandavarkar. In 1981, Bhaskar Chandavarkar, the eminent music composer, was also associated with Amol Palekar’s spin on the Manwat murders, Akriet.

Palekar’s Akriet (Misbegotten) marked the actor’s directorial debut. The Marathi film stars Palekar and Chitra Palekar, his wife at the time. Bhaskar Chandavarkar supplied the eerie soundtrack for a film whose eminent cast included Hemu Adhikari, Dilip Kulkarni and Arun Joglekar.

Except for the misguided decision to blacken the faces and bodies of the actors who play Pardhis, Akriet is a gripping depiction of the horrors of unbridled power. Vijay Tendulkar’s screenplay has characteristic acerbity, sharply observed characters and an astute examination of the social dynamics of small-town Maharashtra.

Rather than exploring superstition, Akriet addresses the skewed gender dynamic that leads to the crimes. Amol Palekar plays Mugatrao, a dissolute landlord who is simultaneously involved with his wife, his mistress Ruhi (Chitra Palekar) and a nurse. Mugatrao’s relationship with Ruhi is partly transactional: he is steeped in the rackets run by her community, which include stealing goods that Mugratao fences.

Desperate to have a child with Mugratao, Ruhi allows herself to be brainwashed into plotting human sacrifice. The treasure-obsessed Mugatrao goes along with the scheme. With neither gold nor a pregnancy in sight, the conspirators become desperate, even as police officer Deshmukh (Arun Joglekar) gets on their trail.

In Akriet, perverse patriarchy is at the root of the killings. For the town’s cynical notables, the crimes are a distraction from their mundane lives as well as an affirmation of their prejudices about the Pardhis.

The movie emphasises Ruhi’s precarious social standing, her loneliness and her anxiety about Mugatrao’s callousness. Having fought with her community to be Mugatrao’s mistress, Ruhi is willing to sink deep to conquer his heart.

In an interview with Scroll in 2019, Palekar spoke of the challenges of making his directorial debut with a difficult subject as ritual murders.

“Looking back on choosing to produce and direct the film and act in it, it was a hara-kiri kind of statement,” Palekar said. “I was at the peak of my popularity, and rather than encashing on it, I chose to make a film set in rural Maharashtra with an almost entirely new cast and crew. It was also unheard of to have a negative character as a protagonist.”

Even Hindi film was intrigued by the Manwat madness. Two years before Palekar’s film, the murders baggily inspired plot points in SU Syed’s Bhayaanak (Terrifying).

The Hindi horror movie from 1979 stars Mithun Chakraborty as a policeman tracking a cult of vampiric villains who conduct human sacrifices in their lust for treasure. The tacky movie featuring comedic berobed baddies echoes the Manwat case only in the aspect of concealed riches.

While Sarvasakshi is on YouTube, Akriet is not yet available on any platforms. Only scratchy VCDs and DVDs survive of a movie that offers a thoughtful interpretation of an unimaginable crime.

The upcoming web series Manvat Murders seems to have set out with the intention of separating speculation from fact. By focusing on the police investigation, the show takes a different approach to the case. In the trailer, Ashutosh Gowariker, who plays Ramakant Kulkarni, declares: “We must find the truth behind the truth.”