TENKASI/MADURAI: The police arrested one more person on Tuesday in the case of a caste Hindu refusing to sell snacks to school children from the SC community. Karivalamvanthanallur police had already arrested Maheswaran and Ramachandran alias Moorthy under various sections of SC/ST Act and IPC and were on look out for Kumar, Sutha and Murugan. They had arrested Kumar from Coimbatore.
Meantime, a field visit by a team from NGO Evidence, headed by Kathir, conducted a field visit to Panjankulam village in Tenkasi district and ascertained that the caste atrocity was deep rooted in the village from school to graveyard. The team found that a kangaroo court headed by village chief Maheswaran, a caste Hindu, recently had decided to stop all transactions with the SC community, including preventing them from using streets in which caste Hindus reside.
The report says around 142 families including 50 people from Scheduled Caste live in the village. "Ever since Maheswaran took over as the village chief, caste division among people has increased in the community. Two caste Hindus married SC women, but no men from SC community have married caste Hindu women in the locality," Kathir said.
Initially there were two cricket teams consisting players from both caste Hindus and SC communities. Maheshwaran allegedly created division among the players and now the teams are based on communities.
In 2020, the SC community team won during a cricket series and a dispute broke out between the players. Later on in the day, caste Hindus abused and beat up SC people. On a complaint from a person from SC community, a case was registered against four people including government school teacher R Karuppasamy and Ramachandran. In retaliation, they filed a complaint and police registered a case, but no one was arrested as the police were aware the people from SC were innocent.
The caste Hindus came for a peace talk to withdraw the case as Ramachandran was likely to be selected under Agnipath recruitment scheme. As both sides refused to withdraw cases, the caste Hindus led by Maheshwaran passed the resolutions in the kangaroo court.