Mumbai: It was an incident that shook the city of Mumbai when indiscriminate police firing on a mob in the Dalit colony Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar in 1997 left ten people dead and injured 25. The mob had gathered to protest the desecration of an Ambedkar statue.
Now 12 years later, the man who ordered the firing - state reserve policeman Manohar Kadam, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The long wait have left the families of victims disappointed.
"We had wanted him to be convicted under Sec 302 for murder," said Sanjay Jadhav, a family-member of the deceased.
As one revisits the colony which had erupted into riots after the killings, the mood is tense.
It was here that a group of residents had gathered to protest against the desecration of the Ambedkar status when they were randomly fired at by the police.
The police had argued they fired because the mob was about to set an oil tanker ablaze, an argument the court rejected.
It is not just here, but the whole country cannot forget what happened. Clearly, even now the incident evokes strong memories in this Dalit stronghold.