VILLUPURAM: A 10-year-old girl grazing goats with her mother was killed on the spot after a piece of rock from a boulder, illegally blasted with gelatin sticks 200 metres away, hit her head on Sunday evening near Vikravandi.
After the incident sparked tension in the locality, police on Monday arrested a 45-year-old villager on the charge of illegally using gelatin sticks to clear a boulder in a canal for dredging.
The police are also questioning the president of Thirukunam panchayat, Prakash, on whose suggestion the villager allegedly used gelatin sticks to clear the boulder.
According to police, E Gayathri of Thirukunam Madura T Kosapalayam village, a Class 5 student of a government school, had joined her mother E Muthulakshmi in grazing goats on land owned by P Krishnamurthy on Sunday as it was a holiday.
After the child collapsed at the spot, locals, who heard the woman’s cry, informed the Kanjanur police. Vikravandi sub-division DSP G Nandakumar and a police team from Kanjanur rushed to the spot and conducted an inquiry. The body was sent to Villupuram Medical College and Hospital in Mundiyampakkam for autopsy.
Accused bought gelatin sticks illegally from kin
According to police sources, the engineering wing of the agriculture department had taken up dredging of canals clogged with sand due to the floods during Cyclone Fengal last year.
“S Sankar (45), who is a staff of the contractor of the agriculture department, had illegally used gelatin sticks to clear a boulder in the canal. The piece of rock flew over 200 metres in the impact of the blast and struck Gayathri,” police sources said.
Villupuram Superintendent of Police P Saravanan said that Sankar was arrested on Monday.
A case has been booked under Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, and under the Explosives Act, 1884. Prakash has been inquired by the police.
Sankar had illegally bought the gelatin sticks from a relative who possessed licence to handle explosives.
According to a source from the village, Muthulakshmi was living separately for the last few years with her daughter after a dispute with her husband, Ezhumalai of Arcot village near Arangandanallur.
Chief Minister M K Stalin, in a press release on Monday, expressed his condolences and announced Rs 3 lakh compensation for Gayathri’s family from the CM’s Public Relief Fund.