Cauvery Basin2

Tamil Research Institution (TRI)
it was better than sitting idle at home and was waiting for the day Balachandran would take
him.
On 04.04.2015, Balachandran came home and said to my son, “We have to go to
Pondicherry tomorrow for food supplier work. Be ready to leave tomorrow.” Then on
05.04.2015 along with my son, Balachandran’s father Harikrishnan, Balachandran’s brotherin-law
Sivakumar, his father-in-law Lakshmanan, his wife’s relative Lakshmanan,
Venkatesan and Velayudham and Sivalingam from Alamarathuvalavu also went.
Then on 07.04.2015, at about 10.00 AM, Prabhakaran, the younger brother of
Balachandran, who had taken my son for work, came to our house and said that the Andhra
Police had caught my son and the 6 others. He then left saying that he would arrange for a
lawyer to get our people released.
Then the next day, i.e. 08.04.2015, at about 08.00 AM, Prabhakaran,
Balachandran’s younger brother came to our house and said that Anburaj, a policeman from
our village, had told him that the Andhra Police had shot dead the persons who had gone
from our village. He also said, “It seems that the names of the persons who went from our
village are mentioned in the newspaper. Come let’s go to Arur Main Road and see what the
matter is.” Immediately my husband Theerthagiri and elder son Pazhanivelu went with him.
They too did not return. But some persons who had gone to Arur came back to the village
and said that the persons who had gone from our village had indeed been shot dead by the
Andhra Police. The whole of the village was wailing.
The next day, i.e. on 09.04.2015 at about 11.00 AM they brought the bodies to our
village. I wailed on seeing my dead son’s body. When I hugged his body and cried, I noticed
that his nose had been slit. The teeth in his lower jaw were broken. There was a cut in his
neck. When I caught hold of his hands I found that the fingers were missing. When I touched
his heels I sensed that there were pits in his heels. On the left side of his chest, a big wound,
indicating that a bullet had pierced him, was there. Pus was coming out of that wound. I cried
aloud that my son had been tortured and killed. Wails resounded from the whole of the
village.
Later when we were about to perform the final rites for the deceased as per the
customs of our community, the policemen prevented us from doing anything and forced us to
cremate the bodies. We told them that since my son was unmarried we would not cremate
the body. But the policemen threatened us and asked us to cremate the body without any
further delay. So we cremated our son’s body on the land near our house at about 1.00 PM
in the afternoon.
My son had never gone to other places for work before this. He went for work only to
alleviate the poverty at home because there was no agricultural work here. He did not do
any offence other than going for coolie work. We are suffering with his loss today. Case
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