Nearly a fortnight after 13 people were killed by police in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district for protesting the pollution levels released by Sterlite copper plant, a report by the Indian Express has revealed that records were tweaked to change the location where police fired on protestors.
The revelation comes after witnesses contradicted what the police said, the report added.
One person told the daily that he was one of those who carried the body of Antony Selvaraj, an accountant with a shipping company, and placed it inside an ambulance two kilometres away from where police claim he was killed.
“The other significant detail to emerge from official records is that on May 21, a day before the police firing, a government circular signed by a divisional magistrate appointed Deputy Tahsildar Sekhar in charge of areas surrounding Fatima Nagar, Therespuram, Puthutheru, Lions’ Town and Matha Church, all about 12 km from the Collectorate complex. But an FIR filed on May 22 at SICOT police station on the killing of protesters shows it was Sekhar who signed the order after Rajkumar Thangaseelan, a Special Tahsildar, who was originally deployed at the Collectorate complex, refused to sign it,” the report added.
Earlier, two deputy tahsildars who allegedly gave the order to the force to do it have been transferred.
Deputy Tahsildars Kannan and Sekar were transferred to Kayathaaru and Srivaikuntam respectively by District Collector Sandeep Nandoor, an official order said.
Thirteen people were killed in police firing on May 22 and 23 after protests for closure of the plant over pollution concerns turned violent in Tuticorin.
The Tamil Nadu government had last month appointed a one-person Commission of Inquiry headed by a retired judge of the Madras High Court to probe the violence in Tuticorin.
The State Human Rights Commission also has initiated an inquiry into the issue.
On May 28, the government ordered the state Pollution Control Board to seal and "permanently" close the Vedanta group's copper plant, following the violent protests.
The following day Chief Minister K Palaniswami maintained in the assembly that police action was "unavoidable" and asserted that action would be taken if anyone had wrongly handled the situation.
The issue continued to rock the assembly in the following days with the ruling AIADMK claiming that the main opposition party DMK had allotted land for expansion of the copper plant in Tuticorin district when it was in power during 2006-11.
The Chief minister had listed out efforts by his government for permanent closure of the unit, including the 2013 action taken by J Jayalalithaa as then chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
He had also accused DMK working president MK Stalin of allotting 230 acres for Sterlite expansion when he was holding the industries portfolio as deputy chief minister earlier.
With PTI Inputs
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