DHARMAPURI: The Scheduled Caste residents of Periyagummanur have been in a quandary for long as they didn't have a proper path to the burial ground in the village. They blamed encroachments and apathy of the authorities for their plight but an odd protest that started early on Friday bore fruit.
The Scheduled Caste residents here staged a protest with the corpse of a 60-year-old woman demanding the Dharmapuri district administration to take steps to provide a path to the burial ground.
The protest ended after five hours after revenue officials stepped in and cleared the path. A revenue official said, "We have conducted a survey, marked the roads and cleared the path with earthmovers. We have also issued a stern warning to encroachers, and it will not happen again".
Valli had died from natural causes at her residence in Periyagummanur village on Thursday. Her bereaved family members and other villagers brought her body to the village entrance, placed it beside the road and sat around it as a mark of protest against the administration for the failure to lay a path.
"Over 35 SC families comprising more than 150 members are among the residents of the village. We have been urging the administration to provide us with a route to the burial ground, but every one of our petitions in the last decade have been left unanswered. While we have burial grounds, we have no way to bring our dead to these lands. So we staged a protest," stated P Muthu, a villager.
Another resident, P Sivasakthi said, "Initially, we had a 10-foot-wide road to the burial ground, but it has shrunk due to encroachments by private individuals. Now we have a mere two-foot-wide path."
The protest lasted for about five hours (since dawn) and after the encroachments had been cleared, the corpse was buried in the burial ground after which people dispersed, police said.