A Melting Pot Of Woes

A year after 13 protesters were killed, much remains to be addressed around Sterlite Copper’s Thoothukudi plant

- Divya J Shekhar

On May 22, the Sahaya Matha Church in Thoothukudi’s Lions Town is crowded with people attending the afternoon mass. They sit silently for over two hours, paying homage to a feisty 17-year-old local girl, who was known to help those in need and aspired to be a lawyer. Exactly a year ago, J Snowlin’s life was cut short by a bullet that pierced through the back of her neck, damaging her upper spinal cord before exiting through her mouth.

Snowlin was among the 20,000- odd people protesting, over 100 days, against the expansion of the Sterlite Copper plant, one of India’s largest copper producers. The company, which is controlled by Vedanta Ltd, a majority-owned subsidiary of the London-listed metals and mining company Vedanta Resources, planned to double the capacity of its smelters, from its current 400,000 metric tonnes of annual copper production. This sparked outrage among the people of Thoothukudi (also known as Tuticorin), a port town about 600 km from Chennai. They said the existing smelters had contaminated their air and water, causing a range of ailments, from respiratory disorders to cancer.

On May 22, 2018, after some of the protesters gathered outside the district collector’s office hurled stones at policemen, a plainclothes officer opened fire, killing 13 people, including Snowlin, and injuring at least 50. Snowlin was the youngest victim. The incident, referred to as one of the most violent environmental protests in India in a decade, was condemned by human rights experts at the United Nations as an “apparent excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force by police”. Days after the violence, the Madras High Court stayed the plant’s expansion and insisted on public consultation. This was followed by the closure of the plant, as the company’s application for renewal of Consent to Operate (CTO) was not approved by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.