Tension prevailed a week after two college going students, belongs to two different communities eloped — a group of 100 people from Vanniyar caste vandalised at least 20 homes belonging to Dalits in the Anathur colony of Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu.
According to a report in The News Minute, the Vaniyars were angered after a 22-year-old college-going Dalit man, E Thirumoorthy, secretly married a Vaniyar woman M, 22-year-old Jayapartha on January 7. The couple left their homes fearing for their lives on February 21.
A group of 100 people, armed with iron rods and thick branches of papaya trees, belonging to the Vanniyar community raided the Madhvan colony, consisting of 150 Dalit families, despite the presence of a few police personnel, and ransacked the house of Thirumoorthi and 19 others on Wednesday. The group injured ten people including children and even damaged vehicles.
Following the incident of violence, over 100 policemen have been deployed to protect the residents of the Dalit hamlet; yet the residents of the colony continue to live in fear. A resident told The News Minute that no policemen came to their rescue when the mob unleashed violence on them.
18-year-old Divya, who lives in the 1st street of the colony told The News Minute, “I heard the danger before I saw it”. She added that the men kept verbally abusing her the entire time, using casteist slurs. “They constantly repeated — How dare a Dalit man marry our Vanniyar woman?”
Meanwhile, police have arrested five accused — Purushothaman, 31, Madhusudhanan, 31, Velu, 30, Devanathan, 45, and Ilayaraja, 31 — and an FIR has been lodged against 50 unnamed men for the brutal attack on the colony.
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