SC community holds night-long stir for place to bury 102-year-old

The protest which started at 4pm on Saturday ended at 4am on Sunday after police and revenue officials held peace talks and made arrangements to bury the body near the site earmarked for burying dead bodies of SC members.

- M SARAVANAN

Nearly 100 Scheduled Caste members of Onnakarasampalayam village in Coimbatore district staged a 12-hour, nightlong protest on road with the dead body of a 102-year-old woman on Saturday after they were denied access to the village's common burial ground by some caste Hindu families.

The dispute has come just a week after a two-judge Madras HC bench of Justices R. Subramanian and K Kumaresh Babu lamented that even after 75 years of Independence, the country is still "unable to break the shackles of casteism and even the secular government is forced to provide for separate burning and burial grounds on communal lines".

According to sources, P Rangammal died of age-related illness on Saturday morning. After final rituals, the woman's relatives carried her body to the common burial ground as the separate crematorium allotted for Scheduled Caste members was inaccessible due to overgrowth of vegetation. There was also space constraint as a major part of the burial ground was taken over by authorities for constructing a new bridge.