By Sukanya Roy, TwoCircles.net
Tenkasi: In the late hours of 22 July, at about 11 pm, Kadayam Forest officials stormed into the house of a 75-year-old farmer, Anaikarai Muthu, living in Vakaikulam village of Tamil Nadu. They picked him up without a memo for arrest, and allegedly tortured him at the Sivasailam Forest Office. Two hours later, his family received news that he had passed away.
The proceedings of this case, so far, reek of a deliberate cover-up. The Judicial Magistrate of Ambasamudram, along with the police, have subsequently aided the Forest Division in successfully skirting the consequences of this unethical and criminal violation of a poor man’s rights and dignity.
Anaikarai Muthu hailed from the Pallar community which is a sub-category within Scheduled Castes and has historically been an agrarian group. He owned a modest three-acre land patta on the periphery of the Kadayam forest range. Groundnuts, yam and brinjal were its main cropping produce.
Wild animals such as pigs and boars often destroy the crops in such areas. The loss of a good yearly harvest can be a huge blow to farmers struggling to pay off debt and meet farming costs. To keep these animals out, some farmers erect a fence around their land.
On 22 July, the Kadayam Forest Office reportedly received an anonymous tip that Muthu was stealing electricity to power his fence. Two officers, Nellai Nayagam and Murugaswamy, along with four volunteers of the Friends of Police accosted Anaikarai in his house, and forcibly took him to their office, without giving him time to even wear his shirt.
The Friends of Police are a group of people who can at best be called the ‘eyes and ears of the police’, while in reality being constituted around the dangerous core tenets of public vigilantism and community policing.
While Muthu was in custody, the Forest Officers beat him brutally. Eye-witnesses report seeing eighteen distinct injuries on his body. An hour later, Anaikarai’s family got a call from the forest office asking them to bring a shirt for him, as he was feeling unwell. Anaikarai’s son, A Natarajan was headed to the office, when somewhere midway, he saw a Sumo parked on the side of the road.
Inside it, he saw his father unconscious, flanked by two Forest guards. They were taking him to the Kadayam Hospital, where the doctors further referred him to a hospital at Tenkasi. Anaikarai Muthu was declared dead when he was brought into the Tenkasi Government Hospital.
Speaking to TwoCircles.net, DSP Tenkasi, Gokulakrishnan, commented, “In custody deaths, while the officers are sometimes responsible for the killing, often people die of natural causes too. Anaikarai Muthu was very old, the shock of the arrest might have been enough to kill him.”
Explaining the course of official action further, he said, “The magistrate will give a request for inquisition and post-mortem. The concerned forest officials, doctors, and relatives will all be summoned to make their case and then a report will be prepared about this case.”
Local human rights organisations, however, narrate contrasting facts. They say that the Judicial Magistrate, Karthikeyan K.M, ordered a post-mortem of Muthu’s body. The magistrate later alleged that ‘rowdy’ demands were made by the family, as the reason for the same.
He obtained the necessary signatures, from three of the deceased’s children, assuring them that the post-mortem would be done in their presence the next day. However, it was done clandestinely in the dead of the night, by two assistant doctors, at Tirunelveli Medical College.
Adv. S. Mohan, Associate Director of People’s Watch, informed TwoCircles.net, “There were no senior forensic experts or family members present, as is legally mandated in the case of encounter killings and lockup deaths.” Mohan belongs from the Pallar community himself.
He further commented, “After the post-mortem was done, the officials dug a pit in the ground to bury his body and installed tube lights for the purpose. In the morning, confused locals brought this event to our notice. This is a clear move to destroy any evidence that might implicate the officials who tortured him.”
The deceased’s son, A. Natarajan told TwoCircles.net that, “Torture is the reason for his death,” and added, “We want this to be (treated as) a murder case. The officers should be suspended.” The FIR filed by him has been registered under Section 176 (1A) (i), on 23 July, at Alwakurichi Police Station.
Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has offered 10 lakh compensation and a government job for one member of the deceased Anaikarai’s family. Vasanthi, 29, his youngest daughter, told local media on July 27 that their quest is for justice, and compensation cannot be a substitute for that.
The family of the deceased, along with human rights groups demand the case to be registered under Section 302 (murder) and thorough inquiries to be conducted by the High Court and the State Human Rights Commission, and suspension of the concerned forest officials who tortured Muthu to death.
A writ petition has also been filed on behalf of the deceased’s wife Palammal, by the Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, a political party fighting for the rights of the Pallar people or Devendrakula Vellalar.
Shanmuga Sudhakar, the state spokesperson for TMMK, said, “The petition demands a CB and CID enquiry in this matter. His body must be sent for post-mortem again. Anaikarai Muthu was a poor farmer, protecting his land. He was treated harshly for a crime he did not even commit. If he had stolen electricity for his fence, where is the complaint from the electricity board? He has been farming for decades here. It’s not as if he was a known criminal.”
Adv. Mohan corroborates this suspicion regarding the inhumanity meted out to Anaikarai Muthu. He asks, “What was the need of taking him to the Forest Office in the middle of the night, without informing his family or giving him time to even wear a shirt, torturing him inhumanely, and then trying to bury his body after a hasty post-mortem?”
Sudhakar highlights the irony of the officers’ brutality, saying, “The duty of the Forest Officials is to protect animals and plants, not to kill a man. It seems for them, the value of human life is lesser than that of wild animals”.
The writ petition was heard in Madras High Court on July 28, where Justice R. Pongiappan condemned the authorities of Tirunelveli Medical College, for conducting the post-mortem at night, citing a previous judgement given by the HC instructing all hospitals to not conduct post-mortem after 4 pm.
Speaking to TwoCircles.net. Adv. I Pandian, director of WITNESS, a group concerned with human rights violations of Dalits and other marginalized people in Tamil Nadu, says, “The number of police atrocities in Tamil Nadu is increasing. State and National Human Rights Commissions cannot help but take note of this. The rate of custodial murder, encounter killings, and police violence against Dalits and minorities in Tamil Nadu is very high. But most of these cases are not adequately reported. We will not tolerate this silence”.