TIRUNELVELI: Former IAS officer and founder of Samooga Samathuva Padai P Sivakami on Monday said Tirunelveli police are not invoking the sections under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act properly and are trying to compromise the victims.
Sivakami visited the district to meet Nanguneri caste atrocity victims, who were hacked by a few school students in August, and to give her recommendations to the commission led by Justice K Chandru. Speaking to the media, she said the district police were forcing the SC complainants to write the complaints as per their wish intending to avoid sections of the SC/ST (PoA) Act.
“The incidents of caste atrocity are increasing in this district. A temporary EB worker, Esakkimuthu, was killed recently after intermediate caste persons intentionally electrocuted him while he was working on the pole. However, the police refused to register a case under the SC/ST (PoA)Act, instead, they made the case as an accident,” she claimed.
The former IAS officer further alleged that the police in Radhapuram denied registration of a case under the Act against 15 intermediate caste persons who attacked an SC man. “The police also registered a counter case against some SC men with the intention of compromising them,” she said.
She alleged that the state government could not give away houses for Nanguneri caste atrocity victims.
However, district Collector K P Karthikeyan denied her allegation stating that the government provided `12 lakh subsidy to the mother of Nanguneri victims, who willingly paid the balance amount of `1.17 lakh to get the house.