[3] The village was the site of a massacre of 58 Dalits allegedly killed by the upper-caste Ranvir Sena on the night of 1 December 1997.
[4] To remove the last shred of evidence of their outrageous act, they crossed the river and slit the throats of the two boatmen who had rowed them, before disappearing in Bhojpur district.
[5] Laxmanpur-Bathe was targeted because Ranvir Sena members believed the village's Dalits, mostly poor and landless, were sympathizers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation.
[5] In the well-planned operation, about 100 Ranbir Sena activists carrying firearms had descended on Lakshmanpur Bathe at around 11 pm.
The entire hamlet located on the banks of the Sone river was virtually decimated in the attack that lasted more than three hours.
[6] On 7 April 2010, the Additional District and Sessions Judge Vijai Prakash Mishra of the Patna Civil Court sentenced 16 men to death and 10 to life imprisonment for the massacre.
While pronouncing the verdict, sessions judge Mishra described the killings as a “stigma on civil society and rarest of rare cases of brutality.
[14] The CPI-ML criticised the state government and said that it would appeal in the apex court to appoint the SIT(special investigation team) probing all the massacre cases in Bihar.
[16][17] Maoists called for a 24-hour strike against the court's decision in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, and the police advised that the banks and shops remain close.