A DECADE OF SORROW AND SILENCE

Ten years after 20 Tamil woodcutters were shot dead by AP police in an alleged encounter at Seshachalam forest, the victim families' fight for justice continues as the case is caught in legal wrangle & apathy of TN, AP govts

- RAJALAKSHMI SAMPATH @ Tiruvannamalai

UCKED away in the dry, dusty corners of Tiruvannamalai district lies Kannamangalam village — the abode of 12 Tamil families whose lives were thrown into disarray on April 7, 2015. No banners hang from its walls, no angry slogans tear through its air; just silence — thick and stubborn — clinging onto the women who have spent 10 years waiting, not for their slain husbands to walk back in, but for someone, anyone, to finally say out loud that what had happened to them was wrong!

This year, too, the seventh of April passed by unremarkably. Barring calls for justice by a few human rights organisations, the 10th anniversary of the mass "encounter" killing of 20 Tamil men in the Seshachalam forest area of Andhra Pradesh by a special task force of AP police for allegedly trying to smuggle red sanders lay buried in memories.

Though public outrage was persistent in the immediate aftermath, and independent fact-finding by various organisations highlighted glaring loopholes in the theory propagated by the AP police, not a single officer was made accountable, and the case continues to remain dormant. While the mainstream society availed the convenience of moving on, such a privilege is beyond access for the families of the victims, of whom 12 hailed from Tiruvannamalai, seven from Dharmapuri and one from Salem.

Tracing six of the families residing in Tiruvannamalai, TNIE embarked on a mission to find out how their lives changed in the absence of sole breadwinners and their fight for justice amid the dearth of resources. Their lives — shaped by poverty, interrupted education, and long-forgotten promises — remain frozen.