Why a 1988 murder has brought the Kshatriya-Patidar blood feud in Gujarat’s Gondal back in focus

At around 9.30 am, Sorathiya, a popular leader of the Patidar community in the area, unfurled the flag, released some white pigeons and took a seat. Suddenly, a young man appeared from behind the stage and shot Sorathiya at point-blank range, the bullet piercing his head. The 59-year-old MLA lay in a pool of blood as then deputy collector JP Dave, Sorathiya’s guards and others reportedly stood rooted to the spot in shock.

An hour later, 22-year-old Anirudhsinh Jadeja, son of Mahipatsinh Jadeja, a local, self-styled Kshatriya strongman-turned-politician, confessed to the murder and surrendered before D Zala, a state reserve police(SRP) officer, then posted at Gondal.

The sensational, daylight murder of an MLA of the then ruling party in Gujarat had reportedly sent shockwaves through the state in 1988 and solidified the long-standing rivalry between the area’s Patidar and Kshatriya castes, aggravating it into a blood feud between the two communities that survived decades.

Last month, the ’80s case and the Kshatriya-Patidar feud were back in focus, after the Gujarat high court struck down a state-granted remission to Anirudhsinh, who had been convicted for Sorathiya’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The former surrendered to the Gondal court last week following a Supreme Court order earlier this month.

As news of the surrender order had spread, Ribda, a small village in Gondal, saw members of the Kshatriya clan gathering at the Jadeja hometown in a show of support for Anirudhsinh. On September 5, according to local police sources, the village had been fortified with over 3,000 police personnel; two cops stood guard at each house in the village that has a population of approximately 1,500, as Anirudhasinh and his two sons, Satyajeetsinh and Rajdeepsinh, came out of their homes, to attend the public meeting.

“When your father’s reputation is at stake, a good son doesn’t think twice before taking action. Anirudh is such a son of our family. He didn’t think twice about the aftermath of his actions,” claimed Chanduba Chudasma, younger sister of Mahipatsinh and Anirudhsinh’s aunt. Further justifying the murder, the 82-year-old Chanduba added: “Whatever he did was for his father.”

Chanduba had travelled from Abdasa, Kutch, earlier this month to Gondal, a distance of about 371 kms, to attend the gathering called by the Kshatriya Samaj Coordination Committee in support of her nephew.

Years after the murder, 59-year-old Anirudhsinh shows no remorse for his action. “Sorathiya was my father’s enemy and I performed my duty as a son,” he told the Federal, refusing to delve further into the incident.

The rivalry between Mahipatsinh, who died in 2023, and Sorathiya was reportedly politically motivated. The late Congress MLA was credited with having rallied the Patidar community, challenging Mahipatsinh’s dominance in the area and thwarting his political ambitions.

“There is no democracy in Gondal,” alleged seventy-one-year-old Parsottam Pipariya, a Patidar community leader, associated with multiple cooperative banks in the area. Pipariya likens Gondal to Mirzapur — an Uttar Pradesh town made famous as the setting of an eponymous OTT crime-revenge series. “You can’t win any election in Gondal without gundagiri [hooliganism]. From the panchayat polls to assembly elections, every candidate, irrespective of party line, has used hooliganism and violence against the other caste to win. This is how things have been in Gondal for more than 30 years now and the one man who has been at the center of it all is Mahipatsinh Jadeja,” he claimed.

A day after Sorathiya’s murder, an FIR had reportedly been filed against Anirudhsinh at Gondal police station. A Rajkot sessions court, however, acquitted him in 1989 on the basis of “lack of evidence”. According to news reports of the time and court records seen by The Federal, the hearing had seen 45 prosecution witnesses, including the deputy collector and mamlatdar, turn hostile. The then Congress government of Gujarat moved the Supreme Court against Anirudhsinh’s acquittal. On July 10, 1997, the court sentenced Anirudhsinh to life imprisonment under the TADA Act for Sorathiya’s murder.

But instead of surrendering to the police, Jadeja reportedly went into hiding.

“The police was divided on the case. Many in the force, who belonged to the Kshatriya community, were supporting Anirudhsinh. They turned a blind eye to his visits to his Rajkot home, his aunt in Kutch and brother in Bhavnagar. He had also rented a flat in Ahmedabad where he would meet his wife, Harshabaa. This continued till 1999,” alleged an Ahmedabad-based police officer speaking on condition of anonymity, who had been posted in Gondal between 1987 and 1990.

The cop added: “In May 2000, the Supreme Court sought a response from the director general of police (DGP) on measures taken to arrest Anirudhasinh. Later that year, the DGP was directed by the apex court to form a special team to arrest Jadeja.”

According to the officer, who claimed to have been a part of that special team, “fifteen police officers of the rank of deputy superintendent of police (DSP) raided more than 150 hideouts across Gujarat and arrested 34 people suspected of providing Anirudhsinh shelter, food, transport etc. Anirudhsinh was finally arrested in October 2000”.

In 2018, after serving 18 years in jail, he was released following a pardon request submitted by his son to TS Bisht, the then additional director general of police (ADGP), Prison. This prompted Haresh Sorathiya, grandson of the late MLA Sorathiya, to move court against the clemency order.

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The history of caste rivalry between the Kshatriya and Patidar communities in Gondal reportedly dates back to the 1976 panchayat polls. KB Devayat, a Kshatriya farmer of Lalavadar village in Amreli district, was a candidate for the polls. A few days after he filed his nominations, a clash erupted between supporters of Devayat and another candidate, a member of the Patidar community. Around ten Kshatriya men of Lalavadar allegedly beat up Patidar men in the area.

About a week later, when Devayat was travelling in a bus with his wife and three children, Patidar men reportedly burnt the family alive.

“The bus must have travelled around six-seven kilometers from Lalavadar when we were stopped by a mob shouting mari nakho, kati nakho (kill them, cut them). Within minutes, around ten men with axes, knives and spears entered the bus and asked all passengers except Devayat and his family to get down. Then a few of the men put a bunch of hay inside the bus, poured kerosene in it and set the bus on fire. Devayat and his family were burnt alive before our eyes,” said 84-year-old Devjisinh Solanki, of Lalavadar village, who had been on the bus. Solankis are members of the Darbar (Kshatriya) caste.

Solanki added: “Suraj Bhan, a passenger from the Kshatriya community, tried to dissuade the mob from setting the bus on fire, but they bludgeoned him to death.”

Three years later, 30 men from the Patidar community were chargesheeted by Amreli Police in the case and convicted by Gujarat high court in 1992.

Eight years after Devayat’s murder, a group of Kshatriya men, allegedly led by a close aide of Mahipatsinh, who had reportedly delivered an arousing speech in the Devayat case, killed 11 Patidars, including women and children, in Bhavnagar to avenge the Kshatriya leader’s murder.

“The men of the two communities kept killing each other until the mid-1990s, irrespective of their political affiliations,” said Manishi Jani, a sociologist and an academician based in Ahmedabad.

Pipariya, however, traces the history of the Kshatriya-Patidar animosity to “sometime in the 1950s when the government took away land from Kshatriya families and royals and distributed them amongst the landless, which included a large number of Patels”. He added: “By the 1970s, districts like Amreli and Bhavnagar were deeply impacted by the caste feud. But it hadn’t reached Rajkot until Mahipatsinh made it his life’s mission to avenge Devayat’s killing. I think that was the turning point of Gondal. The town has never seen peace since.”

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According to Chanduba, Mahipatsinh was first arrested in 1952 by the Gujarat police for being part of the Kshatriya revolt against the Saurashtra Barkhali Abolition Act, 1951, for land redistribution. The years following his release saw him rise to become a Kshatriya strongman and an outlaw.

In 1975, he reportedly won the Gondal taluka panchayat polls as an independent candidate. In 1980, he won the local polls again. In 1990, Mahipatsinh contested the assembly polls from Gondal and won; he was reportedly Gondal’s first Kshatriya MLA, and retained the seat in 1995,despite the BJP reportedly pushing for Patidar leaders from Gondal.

In March 1995 Jayantibhai Vadodaria, a prominent BJP Patidar leader from Gondal was killed. The murder came just a day after BJP's Keshubhai Patel had taken oath a Gujarat CM. According to news reports and court documents, the Gondal police had named four Kshatriya men in the case and accused Anirudhsinh of harbouring the murderers. While the four were eventually convicted, Anirudhsinh was acquitted owing to a lack of evidence.

“The police strongly suspected that Mahipatsinh Jadeja and his son Aniruddhasinh Jadeja were the masterminds behind the murder of Jayantibhai Vadodaria. But it could never be proven,” concurred Jani.

In the 1998 assembly polls, BJP fielded a Kshatriya candidate from Gondal instead of a Patidar, reportedly to curb the rise of the Mahipatsinh-Anirudhsinh. A young Jayrajsinh Jadeja, son of Temubha Jadeja, a close aide of Mahipatsinh, defeated him and went on to retain the seat in 1998, 2002 and 2012.

“With Jayrajsinh’s victory, the BJP government had hoped that the Patidar-Kshatriya rivalry that had defined the politics of Gondal would end. But, soon Jayrajsinh was faced with Vinu Shingala, a charismatic Patidar leader who was hailed as the next Popat Sorathiya by the Patidars. The problem escalated when Singhala joined the BJP and both the leaders clashed within the party,” said Kunal Patel, a senior BJP leader from Rajkot.

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Over the years, there have been more murders of members of both communities, allegedly by those from the other caste.

Dinesh Bambhaniya, former leader of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), recalls visiting Gondal to organise the Patel youth for a 2015 movement demanding quota from the community. “While the Patel youth fought for reservations across the state, the young Patel men in Gondal only wanted one thing – the end of the dominance of Kshatriya families,” he said

Geetaba Jadeja, the current BJP MLA of Gondal and wife of Jairajsinh, refused to comment on the history of caste violence and law and order situation in her constituency; both her husband and son Ganesh are accused in murder cases.

But according to Brajesh Kumar Jha, commissioner of police, Rajkot, “things have become better over the years with the arrest of Anirudhsinh and demise of Mahipatsinh; the family had been at the centre of caste violence in Gondal”. He recalled, “There was a time when there used to be at least 50 murders in a year in Gondal owing to caste animosity. Even though Rajkot was developing as the economic centre of Saurashtra, businessmen stayed out of Gondal due to constant violence.”

One can only hope that the renewed focus on the Anirudhsinh-Popat Sorathiya case will not push Gondal to a return to those troubled times.