JOIN US“You may arrest us here, but we have already sent ten of our activists to enter the tanks and the grazing lands in Kaverirajapuram that belongs to the people,” All India Kisan Sabha general secretary and CPM politburo member K Varadarajan, burst out, as he along with his colleagues were taken into custody at the district headquarters of Tiruvallur.
A tense situation has been prevailing here since Sunday night, as this tiny rain-drenched village virtually turned into a police fortress with the state government mobilising over 1,500 personnel from three districts to avert any possibly entry into the contentious lands.
The police said 302 activists, including 38 women, that included Varadarajan and U Vasuki, national secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, were arrested at Tiruvallur for unlawful assembly and threatening to march to Kaverirajapuram where prohibitory order was in force. The arrested were later let off on Monday evening.
As many as 17 armed police pickets were posted along a radius of five km around the village, sealing all entry points into Kaverirajapuram including the now famous ‘Justice Dinakaran Road’. Vehicles were thoroughly checked and advised not to enter the village.
Denying that there was any “caste bias” in their agitation, Varadarajan rubbished charges that the campaign against Justice Dinakaran stemmed from any professional jealousy within the judiciary.
The agitators, when stopped near the Kamaraj statue at Tirvallur and asked not to proceed further to Kaverirajapuram, sat in dharna there, disrupting vehicular traffic on the Chennai-Tirupati highway for over an hour.