The CBI charge sheet had not named senior officials. Will the TN government now approach Madras HC to ask the CBI to reopen its probe?
A policeman in plainclothes aims a rifle at anti-Sterlite plant protestors in Thoothukudi in May 2018 (Supplied)
The image of a man in a yellow T-shirt comfortably balancing himself atop a moving vehicle and opening fire on a restive crowd running away from him will remain etched in memories in Tamil Nadu’s southern port town of Thoothukudi — then Tuticorin — for a long time to come.
It is the kind of stuff that Kollywood villainy is made of. This one was for real, and the man opening fire from a long-range self-loading rifle (SLR) was a policeman in civvies.
The report of the one-member Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission, which probed the police firing on unarmed protestors in Thoothukudi demanding the permanent closure of private sector copper smelter Sterlite on 22–23 May 2018, has reportedly named a host of police officials, starting with a then IG of Police (now ADGP) down to some constables, for the “dastardly” killing of 13 persons during those two days, by shooting them mostly from a distance and from their “hideouts”.
The commission also found then District Collector N Venkatesh — now with the National Fisheries Development Board, Hyderabad — guilty of “abdication of responsibility, gross negligence, and ill-conceived decisions”, and for not being in the headquarters when the port-city was tense.
The CBI charge sheet, filed after a probe ordered by the Madras High Court, had not named any senior official.
The anti-Sterlite protests turned violent on 22 May 2018 with 13 people killed in police firing (Creative Commons)
And the crime of the dead? They were the unluckier ones, along with the scores who were injured in police firing in Thoothukudi, for joining a procession of “unarmed” men and women to the District Collectorate.
This occurred on the 100th day of the mass protest, and the protestors were demanding the permanent closure of the Sterlite copper unit after its industrial operations had polluted groundwater in an extended neighbourhood and the company’s seeming unwillingness to treat the effluents before letting them out — violating commitments to and/or the directions of the state government and the higher judiciary, going up to the Supreme Court.
The commission has recommended departmental and criminal action against the offenders, and also a higher compensation of ₹50 lakh each to the families of the victims, against ₹20 lakh given by the then AIADMK state government of chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, now Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.
The commission has recommended ₹10 lakh each as compensation for the injured, and that the government also take care of the medical treatment of a police constable.
Post-protests, the Opposition DMK, which promised swift action in the matter, swept the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 Assembly elections. In the Lok Sabha polls, DMK’s Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, daughter of the late party patriarch and half-sister of current chief minister MK Stalin, won from the Thoothukudi constituency.
She defeated then state BJP president, Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, now Telangana Governor, who contested for the AIADMK combine, by a huge margin. The DMK alliance repeated the poll performance in the Assembly elections, two years later, in 2021.
Photo from 14 May 2021 when the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission of Inquiry submitted its interim report to CM MK Stalin (Supplied)
Justice Jagadeesan submitted the commission report, after obtaining multiple extensions, to Chief Minister MK Stalin on 18 May. Under the law, the government should place the report on the table of the state Assembly, when next convened, along with an “Action-Taken Report” (ATR).
However, Chennai-based Frontline news magazine “leaked” the report in its edition dated 25 August, and the follow-up action is keenly expected all around. Popular expectations include departmental/criminal action against the civil and police-service officers named in the report.
It also involves the follow-up on the findings of the state police and the CBI (acting on the directions of the Madras High Court), reporting their inability to identify/locate the 20 “outsiders” who had pelted stones at the collectorate and also other protest venues. The commission, however, said that the troublemakers’ faces were clearly identifiable from the video footage of the day’s events since in circulation.
Photo from 22 May 2018 when violence broke out on the 100th day of the anti-Sterlite protests (Supplied)
It remains to be seen if the CBI would reopen investigations once the report is officially out, or either the state government or the angry family members would seek directions to the effect from the high court, where the original case is still pending.
The AIADMK naturally limited its early comments to the irresponsibility of the government leading to the media leakage of a five-volume 3,000-page document. The party’s substantive reaction would be known only when the report is placed before the Assembly.
Significantly, the “leaked” report at least does not blame any politician, particularly from the then ruling AIADMK, for complicity of any kind.
More importantly, the commission did not find any “specific evidence” that pointed to the involvement of Sterlite Industries in the inexplicable and non-condonable police action, as claimed by some activist groups, of which many had camped in Thoothukudi during that tense period.
This may have absolved the nation’s largest copper smelter until the 2018 incident, from part of the crime, though its polluting the air and groundwater was still the main culprit.
The past hangs heavily on the promoter, the Vedanta Group. The smelter plant came up in Thoothukudi in the late 1990s, after Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa denied permission owing to the anticipated effluent effects.
On several occasions, the state government and also the Supreme Court intervened after MDMK founder Vaiko and other activists highlighted the high incidence of pollution, implying the absence of cooperation from the management side.
The company, if desirous of resuming its operations, as it had hoped up to a point, would still have to convince the state government and also the Supreme Court about its effluent-discharge policies and actions, after both had rejected its efforts and commitments — before and after the firing incident in Thoothukudi — which alone led to its court-upheld closure.
Violence broke out on the 100th day of the anti-Sterlite protests (Supplied)
And it would still have to convince the local population about its intentions, against a prevailing credibility gap, especially in ensuring their health and safety, which has become a key socio-political issue across “Dravidian” Tamil Nadu in recent decades.
The Koodankulam protests against Russia-funded nuclear power plants in the neighbourhood were the first of their kind, and one against the hydro-carbon units at Neduvasal, up in the Cauvery delta, is still out there, unresolved.
Thoothukudi was caught in between, after the successful Jallikattu protests a year earlier, in January 2017, which set the mood for pro-people rallies that derived from the pan-Tamil identity, into which merged larger life and livelihood issues with a particular impact on the environment.
May 14, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
