Memorial  |  6 Aug 1991

The Tsundur massacre

This account tells of young men chased and killed, and of their bodies thrown into canals. The section on 6 August describes the killings; you can skip it and read on from the courts.

On 6 August 1991, after, by survivors' accounts, the police told them to flee their homes, eight Dalit men were hunted down and killed in the fields and canals around Tsundur, in Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district; the prosecution named mobs of the village's dominant castes. A special court convicted 56 people in 2007, and the High Court acquitted them all in 2014.

By The Dalit Project·Updated

Key takeaways

  • Eight Dalit men, all between 21 and 40, were killed at Tsundur on 6 August 1991, by the count the courts and most reports give. K. Balagopal, writing six weeks later, counted 17 dead or missing.1,3,5
  • The country's first special court for a single case under the 1989 law against atrocities sat in Tsundur itself. In 2007 it convicted 56 people; in 2014 the High Court acquitted every one of them.1,2,3
  • The Dalits of Tsundur buried their dead in the heart of the village and called the place Rakta Kshetram, the field of blood. The State appealed to the Supreme Court, which stayed all further proceedings.3,7,9

In the middle of Tsundur, a village near Tenali in Guntur district, is a burial ground the Dalits of the village call Rakta Kshetram, the field of blood. They buried their dead there in August 1991, India Together and Feminism in India report, so that no one who came after would forget.3,9

On 6 August 1991, eight Dalit men were hunted down and killed in the fields around the village. Seven were Malas and one a Madiga, two of Andhra's Dalit communities.3,7,9 The prosecution's case, and the reporting since, is that they were killed by mobs of Reddy and Kapu men, from landowning dominant castes, from Tsundur and neighbouring villages.2,3,9 The High Court that later acquitted the accused wrote that "the precious lives of eight innocent persons hailing from Dalit community were lost."3

A boycott

Tsundur is rich canal-fed delta country. The Reddys owned more than 2,500 of its 3,000 acres, The News Minute reported, and the Dalits worked as labourers on that land.4 By 1991 many young Dalits had studied at college in Tenali, read Ambedkar, Phule and Periyar, and begun to organise. "They slowly started breaking the stranglehold of traditional caste structures," Jaladi Moses, who was 18 then, told The News Minute.4 The High Court, too, records that Dalit youth "did not miss any opportunity to assert themselves."1

In July 1991 an incident at the village cinema, in which a Dalit youth's foot touched a Reddy, "turned into a big issue", India Together wrote; The Mooknayak says he grazed the foot of a Reddy woman and apologised. A committee of the village's dominant castes imposed a boycott on the Dalits from 9 July: no work in their fields, no entry to their part of the village, and Dalit tenancies cancelled.3,7 In the weeks that followed, India Together reported, Reddys attacked the Dalit locality, a Dalit youth was beaten in a teashop and a Dalit shopkeeper was stabbed; the police account in the High Court record lists offences on both sides. Prohibitory orders were imposed and a police picket stationed in the village.1,3

6 August 1991

This section describes men being chased and killed.

On the morning of 6 August, policemen came into the Dalit locality and told the men to run: the CRPF, a central police force, was coming to arrest them on a complaint by the Reddys, India Together reported.3 "On that morning, the police hounded the Dalits from their houses into the fields," Jaladi Moses told The News Minute.4

In the fields, armed men were waiting. The High Court records about 300 men gathered with weapons before the police station, and another 50 or 60 coming by tractor along the Modukuru road to chase the Dalits.1 They came from Tsundur and from the villages around it, India Together reported.3 Most of the dead were young men, chased from place to place and beaten with cycle chains and iron rods, K. L. Richardson, a pastor who had served at Tsundur, wrote.8

The dead were packed into gunny bags and thrown into the canals, India Together reported.3 Over the next three days the bodies were found, swollen and decomposed. India Together says the police recovered them; Feminism in India and The Mooknayak say the Dalits searched for them themselves, because the police would not.2,3,7,9

A large police force had been in the village since the night before, the civil-liberties activist K. Balagopal wrote six weeks later in the Economic and Political Weekly, and it stood by.5 One Dalit woman later recalled, Feminism in India reported, that she begged the police to save the men and was turned away.9

The High Court's judgment names nine among the dead, though the courts and most sources count eight: Jaladi Immanuel, Jaladi Jalaiah, Jaladi Mattaiah, Mallela Subba Rao, Mandru Ramesh, Jaladi Isaac, Angala Kuduru Raja Mohan Rao, Sankuru Samson and Devarapalli Jaya Raj.1

After the killings

Mandru Parishudha Rao died of shock the day after, Balagopal wrote; Feminism in India says it was on seeing his brother's body.5,9 Women and children took refuge in the Salvation Army church at Tenali.7,8

The Dalits of Tsundur turned away the government's offer of Rs 1 lakh (about US$4,400 at 1991 rates) for each family of the dead, Balagopal wrote, and sent back the politicians who came to call.5 They boycotted the judicial inquiry the state set up under Justice A. Gangadhar Rao, and demanded a special court.3,5

On 10 September 1991, police fired on a hunger-strike camp in Tsundur and killed Kommerla Anil Kumar, 22 by The News Minute's account, a survivor of 6 August and vice-president of the victims' committee.4,5 "It was a cold-blooded murder," his father, Kommerla Raja Rao, told The News Minute in 2017. "He was killed because they thought that the movement will die a slow death, if one of its leaders is killed."4

The dominant castes, for their part, formed a front of their own, the Sarvajanabhyudaya Porata Samiti, and called bandhs, shutdown strikes, Balagopal reported.5

A court in the village

The police charged 219 people under the Indian Penal Code and the 1989 law against atrocities on Scheduled Castes and Tribes.1 A special court for this case alone was set up with its seat in Tsundur, the first of its kind in the country.1,2,4 The accused objected to being tried in their own village, and to a Dalit judge, India Together reported, and the trial ran for about sixteen years.3

On 31 July 2007 the special court convicted 56 people. It sentenced 21 to life imprisonment for murder and 35 to a year in prison and a fine of Rs 2,000 (about US$49 at 2007 rates) each; it acquitted 123, and 33 accused had died by then.1,2,3

The victims' families and the government appealed for heavier sentences; the convicted appealed against theirs. The High Court heard the convicted men's appeals.3 On 22 April 2014 a bench of Justices L. Narasimha Reddy and M. S. K. Jaiswal acquitted all 56. "The net result is that the prosecution failed to prove the exact time of the death of the deceased and place of occurrence and the identity of the persons who attacked them," it held, adding: "The trial court itself suggested that there are serious procedural lapses in the prosecution but ignored them."2,3

The judges appealed to the villages to "bury the hatchet", Deccan Chronicle reported, and ordered the police to stop any celebrations or protests in Tsundur and Modukuru for three months.2 "Carrying the old legacy would not be in the interest of anyone," they wrote.3

Andhra Pradesh's government appealed to the Supreme Court, which stayed all further proceedings in the cases, Feminism in India reported.9 In 2026 The Mooknayak described the case as "stuck in legal limbo" under the stay for almost twelve years.7

In their words

Testimony, as published by the outlets named. We did not interview anyone, and we have not contacted the families (our rule until an account is released).

Jaladi Moses lost three of his family on 6 August, his father among them, The News Minute reported. He became president of the victims' committee that December, at 18. Twenty-six years later, the reporter wrote, he told the story without emotion, having told it hundreds of times.4

Kommerla Raja Rao was earning Rs 30 a day (about US$1.30 at 1991 rates) in a Reddy landlord's fields when the massacre happened. "I never went back to work after that day," he told The News Minute. "However, some of us had to go back to work after a year of empty stomachs forced us to kill our self-respect and dignity."4

"They wanted to teach us a lesson," a Dalit woman told a fact-finding team just after the killings, as India Together quotes her. "That we can never live as decent people and should be servile to them forever."3

Who remembers, and how

Tsundur is remembered as the massacre that set off a new wave of Dalit movements in Andhra Pradesh, The News Minute wrote.4 The Dalit Mahasabha, led by Katti Padma Rao, carried the campaign as far as a march on Delhi.5,9 Vemuru, the constituency that includes Tsundur, was reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate after the massacre.4

In the backyard of Kommerla Raja Rao's house, about 100 metres from where his son was shot, stands a memorial to Anil Kumar, with pictures of Ambedkar, Periyar and Phule on the walls inside.4

What is still unknown

We do not name any of the accused; the High Court judgment does.1 The count of the dead differs: eight in the courts and most reports, 17 dead or missing by Balagopal's count in 1991, and "around 20" in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, in its debate of 13 August 1991, India Together reported.1,3,5 The High Court names nine men among the dead while speaking of eight; Feminism in India's list of eight leaves out Jaladi Jalaiah. The higher counts include men still missing when Balagopal wrote.1,5,9 The report of the Gangadhar Rao commission has not been found, nor the Supreme Court's present record of the case.3,7

Our sources

Two sources are close to primary: the High Court's 2014 judgment (1), which recites the prosecution case and the police record, and K. Balagopal's report in the Economic and Political Weekly six weeks after the killings (5); we could not open his piece again when this account was written, so the points resting on it come from our earlier reading of it. K. L. Richardson's book chapter (8) is a pastor's field account. The rest is press and comment, from 2014 to 2026 (2, 3, 4, 7, 9), much of it drawing on the same court record and on earlier accounts. Source 6 is cited by the record but not used here.

On the map at the centre of Guntur district. See it on the map.

The sources

  1. Primary. High Court of Andhra Pradesh (via Indian Kanoon). Case record, Criminal Appeal Nos. 1021 of 2007 and batch (party names not shown). 22 Apr 2014.
  2. Press. Deccan Chronicle. Tsundur massacre accused let off. 23 Apr 2014.
  3. Press. India Together. Killing the dead all over again (Venugopalrao Nellutla). 26 May 2014.
  4. Press. The News Minute. Tsunduru massacre: 26 years after brutal killings in Andhra, justice eludes victims. 6 Aug 2017.
  5. Study. Economic and Political Weekly (copy hosted at balagopal.org). Post-Chundur and Other Chundurs (K Balagopal). 19 Oct 1991.
  6. Press. The Wire. 12 years on, Dalit Survivors of Andhra Pradesh's Laxmipeta Massacre Await Justice (Suman Damera). 13 Jun 2024.
  7. Press. The Mooknayak. 35 Years After Tsunduru: Are We Still Living With the Conditions That Killed Eight Dalits? (Adala Anvith Reddy and Karamala Areesh Kumar). 27 Aug 2026.
  8. Study. Religion Online (book chapter). Chapter 14: The Martyrs of Karamchedu and Tsunduru, by K.L. Richardson, in Martyrs in the History of Christianity, ed. Franklyn J. Balasundaram. Undated.
  9. Press. Feminism in India. The Tsunduru Massacre Of Dalits Of 1991 | #DalitHistoryMonth (Ravali). 30 Apr 2019.

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