CUDDALORE: After the girl's parents agreed to receive her body on Saturday morning, security has been tightened in Kallakurichi town and the girl's village near Veppur.
According to police, additional forces had been deployed to government Kallakurichi medical college hospital and important junctions in the town on Friday. A posse of police personnel has been deployed to the village and security arrangements were being supervised by Cuddalore SP S Sakthi Ganesan.
On Friday, Kallakurichi collector Sravan Kumar Jatavath and SP P Pakalavan inspected the vandalised school at Kaniyamoor. The collector told reporters that the government was checking the possibility of reopening the school and also organising camps for those students who wanted documents such as transfer certificates.
On Thursday night, people from nearby villages dumped on the roadside items looted from the school premises during Sunday's riot. On Friday morning, they were collected and kept on the premises of the Amman temple at Kaniyamoor village, police said.
Meanwhile, the Special Investigation Team continued its investigation on the school premise on Friday. Forensic experts from Kallakurichi, Salem, Cuddalore, Tiruvannamalai, and Villupuram collected samples and videographed the spot with special cameras capable of detecting fingerprints.
'No outsider during funeral'
Residents of the village of the schoolgirl said they don’t want outsiders to attend the funeral on Saturday, fearing it might result in another untoward incident. Some said they had placed a request with police in this regard.
Pandals were erected in front of her house on Thursday night. With her parents busy with court proceedings, only a few close relatives were seen at the house. A few villagers told The New Indian Express that they were making arrangements for the funeral as the parents were away.
One said: "As autopsy had been performed twice, the body won't be kept for more than two hours for people to pay homage." Many, however, opined that outsiders shouldn’t be allowed into the village for the funeral.
Until Monday, the residents said, tension prevailed in the village.
On Friday, however, it seemed normalcy has returned. There were still police personnel on the streets and outsiders were being allowed in only after a check at the village entrance along the Salem highway. Many of the villagers were afraid to speak about Sunday’s riot on the school premises.
Stolen dream
A close relative of the girl said: "Hers was an agrarian family. Only after her father went to Singapore as a labourer did they start faring better." Her parents had dreamed of giving her a good education and help her get a good job. "Her mother is a farmhand and an insurance agent. Her father and mother spent most of their earnings on the studies of their children," said another relative
A few other children from the village, too, went to the same school and all of them, including the girl, used to go the school by bus. She was admitted to the hostel only on July 1 this year.