Crime Today News
A veshti, a Royal Enfield motorcycle and a kabbadi trophy.
In Tamil Nadu, the mere possession of these things nearly killed three young boys early this year.
Adhisesan P, R Iyyasamy and Devendran Raj don’t know each other, but they are around the same age: Iyyasamy is 20 years old, while Devendran and Adhisesan are in their late teens. All three have wavy hair, hail from villages in the southern part of Tamil Nadu, and are from Dalit communities.
During Pongal festivities in January, Adhisesan was brutally beaten and struck with a stone that caused deep lacerations on his head. In February, Iyyasamy was hacked with a sickle while he was returning home on his bike. In March, Devendran was forced to get off a bus while he was on his way to write his final school exam; he was hacked on his head and hands, leaving three fingers severed.
In all three cases, the attackers were young boys from dominant caste communities in their villages.
The stories of all the three boys appeared in the newspapers on the following days, and then faded from public view. But they are still living with the pain and shock of the attacks.
The village of Sankampatti is located in the town of Usilampatti in Madurai district. The town was the site of one of Tamil Nadu’s most horrific honour killings – in 2016, Shankar, a Dalit man, was hacked to death in the middle of a busy road. The killing was captured on CCTV footage that went viral.
Adhisesan was not even ten when this incident took place. He lived in a village near the town at that point with his father, who was separated from his mother. “I didn’t experience much caste discrimination there,”, he said It was only when he moved to Sankampatti “a couple of years ago, that things became bad for me”, he said.
Since his move, Adhisesan has lived with his mother, Easwari P, who suffers from a mental illness. He dropped out of school in Class 9 because he had to support his family financially. Currently, he gets paid Rs 500 per day as a professional drummer, who is invited as part of a troupe to perform during temple festivals and other festival days.
Adhisesan said that the first time he faced casteist abuse was a year ago, during a temple festival. While he was playing and dancing during the festival, he recounted, he accidentally touched the hand of a man who belonged to the dominant Kallar caste. “They scolded me for touching them,” he said. “But I got into a fight with them and they beat me up.” When Adhisesan was still out, the group came back looking for him in his house. “That is when they broke both the doors. They looked everywhere for him,” his mother said. Even in early April, there was still a gaping hole in the front door.
In order to avoid them, Adhisesan moved to Kerala for six months, and worked at a bakery. After he returned, Adhisesan tried his best to lay low and not attract any attention. Until Pongal this year.
The harvest festival is one of Tamil Nadu’s most popular festivals. On the day, Adhisesan wore a new, brightly coloured shirt that he had purchased for the occasion, over a pair of shorts. His mother pulled out the shirt from their shelf to show me – it was in tatters.
“Since I was going to the temple I thought it would be better to wear a veshti over my shorts,” Adhisesan said. On his way, he tied his veshti above his knees. In the village, as in most others, men from Scheduled Castes are not allowed to wear their veshtis above their knees.
“Suddenly, some men surrounded me and started asking how I had dared to wear a veshti above my legs, and asked me to lower it,” Adhisesan recalled. “They scolded me and hit me.” Adhisesan ran back home.
A little while later, a friend of his, from the dominant-caste community told him there was a job for him in another part of the village. “Five or six people turned up on motorbikes and asked me to go along with them,” he said. The teenager accompanied the men. It was only a little while later that he realised that he was being misled.
The group stopped the bikes at a temple, where others were waiting. One of the men snatched Adhisesan’s phone from him. “They all ganged up together, called me casteist slurs and started beating me,” he recalled.
He was assaulted for an hour, the teenager said. During this time, not only did his assaulters hurl casteist abuses at him, they also forced him to curse himself and his community. “They told me to say the name of my community and insult myself,” he said. Adhisesan said the group made the youngest member of their group urinate on him, before they finally let him go. “Somehow I walked back and passed out when I reached home,” he said.
His horrified mother alerted some neighbours, but they advised her not to call an ambulance because it would cause “unnecessary problems” in the community, he recounted. The police eventually arrived and took him to the hospital in their car, Adhisesan said. He filed a complaint with the police, who took the six main people who assaulted him into custody.
Adhisesan was admitted to the hospital for three days. But though the accused were arrested, Adhisesan was too afraid to return to his village. He stayed at a relative’s house in the town for a few weeks and only then returned.
To his dismay, he returned to an even more hostile environment. Ever since the incident occurred, Adhisesan and his family have been socially boycotted by others in the village. “Nobody talks to us,” he said. “We are not allowed to buy anything from the shops here either.”
One of the shops that the family usually frequents is owned by the family of one of the boys who physically assaulted Adhisesan. “We have to go all the way to the main road to buy anything now,” the teenager said.
Adhisesan said that he suspects that the dominant caste families have warned others against interacting with them. “All the families from our community either work for them or have taken loans from them. So they cannot disobey them,” he said.
A week before we met in March, his assaulters were released on bail. Ever since Adhisesan and his mother have been living in fear. “I’m scared they will do something to me again,” he said. He added that he never leaves the house, other than for work.
Adhisesan never wants to wear a veshti again in his life. “Actually, nobody from our community wears anyway,” he said. “I won’t ever wear one again.”
Around 70 km away from Sankampatti, the road leading to the village of Melapidavoor cuts through vast expanses of arid land. Only a few palmyra trees, the state’s official tree, can be seen, mostly dry and dying.
In April, when I visited, a poster of K Kamaraj stood on the side of the road that led to the village. In the picture, the state’s former chief minister, who started the country’s first midday meal scheme in the state, had his arms around two young children. Further down the road was a big banner with a picture of Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar, a leader of the Thevar community, which is categorised as a most backward class, and which is dominant in the region.
A policewoman seated on a chair inside Iyyasamy’s house looked curiously as I approached the entrance of Iyyasamy’s house, but did not stop me. The taxi driver said later that she had asked him several questions about my visit.
Iyyasamy’s mother, R Chellamal, opened the door, inviting me inside. She said that the policewoman had been posted at their house ever since Iyyasamy was attacked on February 12.
Iyyasamy, a third-year BSc mathematics student, is a member of the Paraiyar community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste. Iyyasamy is very introverted, a docile young man. “I’m a loner. Even when guests come I always lock myself in the room,” he said. “I don’t have many friends either.”
Iyyasamy’s family is only one of the five Paraiyar families in the village, Iyyasamy said, and none of the other families lived anywhere close to his house. “We are surrounded by upper castes,” he said, referring to the Agumudiyar sub-caste of the dominant Thevar community.
He explained that his family bought him the motorcycle because he faced difficulties in commuting to his college. There are only three or four buses that come to Iyyasamy’s village, he said, and he could never be sure that any of them would stop at his bus stop. Iyyasamy’s teachers were extremely strict about timings. “We would be berated if we arrived even a few minutes late,” he said. “But the buses were unreliable and often made me late to class.”
So, Iyyasamy asked his mother to buy him a motorbike, specifically an Enfield Bullet. “I really wanted a Bullet,” Iyyasamy said, shooting his mother a sheepish smile.
Chellamal had some money saved up and did not want to deny her youngest son his wish. So she bought him the Bullet from a dealership in Sivaganga.
Immediately after, the family began to be taunted by neighbours, particularly by members of the Agumudiyar community. The three men who attacked Iyyasamy also took part in this harassment, Iyyasamy said.
This was not the first time that the family was taunted for its possessions.
Five years ago, Chellamal’s parents decided to build her a pucca house on the land that they owned. “It isn’t my money. My parents wanted to give me this house,” Chelammal said. But the move left many of their neighbours peeved. Most houses in the village had thatched roofs and very few had been built with brick and concrete.
“Because we are Paraiyars and had built such a big house they were angry,” she said. “They would pass comments sometimes under their breath and sometimes directly.”
Chellamal said that they would hear comments such as “See, they are Paraiyars but they have such a fine house,” and “They are Paraiyars but are arrogant because they have a big house.”
About two years ago, when the family was not at home, the house was vandalised. “They broke our windows, damaged the outside of our house and destroyed kitchen items we had left outside,” Iyyasamy said.
The family approached the police and attempted to file a complaint. “The police asked us to find out who did it and take them to the station,” Iyyasamy said. “As if that is supposed to be our job.” He added, “But the ones who attacked the house confessed to the police themselves and they apologised and were let go.”
When the family bought the Bullet, the casteist remarks increased.
A few days before the attack, too, his assailants taunted Iyyasamy for riding the Bullet. He did not pay them much attention and rode off.
On the day of the incident, he noticed the three of them observe him as he left his house on his bike. On the way back, just a few metres away from his house, he recounted, the three men suddenly stopped his bike. They were wielding sickles.
“They called me a casteist slur and asked how I had dared to ride a Bullet,” he said. “Then they tried to slit my throat, but I raised my hand to my face and tried to push them away, and the knife cut my hand. They then slit my other hand too.”
Panicking, Iyyasamy began screaming and ran to his house. The men chased him for a few seconds, and then let him go, he said. Iyyasamy ran home and collapsed at the door.
“He was screaming ‘Amma, they’ve hacked me!’ and I ran out,” Chellamal recalled. “There was blood everywhere. On his left hand, a part of his flesh was just hanging.” She recounted that she dialled the emergency ambulance number, but that no one responded.
Iyyasamy was finally taken on his brother’s bike to the nearest hospital. But doctors were hesitant to treat him because his injuries were grievous – one of the cuts on his wrist was dangerously close to his nerves.
So, doctors only gave him basic care and then referred him to another hospital. There, he was referred further to the Tirunelveli Government Hospital, in the nearby district. He remained in the hospital for 20 days.
Though it has been almost two months since the attack, Iyyasamy has not regained full use of three of his fingers. “The doctors are saying it will take me another six months to regain full function of my fingers,” he said.
The casteist motivation for the attack was undeniable, he noted. There were other families from dominant castes that also owned Bullets, “But they don’t question them or attack them. But because I’m a Paraiyar and have a bike, they cannot bear it.”
This is despite the fact that he has never sought to assert his caste identity. “I just bend my head and tolerate their taunts and other casteist behaviour,” he said. “I never argue. That is what they expect too, that we don’t challenge them. Yet, they attacked me.”
The family lamented that none of their neighbours except for one, had visited Iyyasamy in the hospital and that nobody had condemned the incident or showed any kind of support to the family. “I worry that it will happen again,” Chellamal said.
One of the family’s upper-caste neighbours dismissed the entire incident as a “fight between young boys”. He said, “Everybody is brotherly towards each other. That day the boys were drunk and got into a fight. But we have no caste issues here in the village.”
While Adhisesan and Iyyasamy were in their homes in April, in the district of Tirunelveli, Devendran was in a ward at the department of plastic surgery at Tirunelveli Medical College and Hospital. Two police sat at the entrance of the ward for his protection.
“Even back at our home in the village they have posted police to protect our family,” said Thanganesh T, Devendran’s father, as we talked in the corridor outside the ward.
Devendran is Thanganesh’s oldest child. He also has two daughters, who are 12 and 13 respectively, and who were at a relative’s house. Ever since the attack on their son, Thanganesh and his wife Malathi have not left the hospital even once – while one always sits beside him, the other steps out to procure medicines, food and other essentials from within the hospital premises.
The family is from the village of Ariyanayagipuram in Thoothukudi district. Thanganesh and Malathi both work in a brick kiln and earn about Rs 500 per day.
“Devendran studies in an English school,” the father said with a proud smile. “He’s very good at studies and kabbadi.”
The 17-year-old has been playing kabbadi since he was in Class 9, his father said. On March 9, Devendran, who is now in Class 11, was on his way to his school to write a final exam, when three men forced him off the bus and assaulted him.
The assaulters were from the same village and belonged to the dominant caste Kallar community, who are categorised as a most backward class. A few days earlier, Devendran’s team had won a kabbadi match against a team that comprised dominant-caste individuals, including Kallars.
In fact, Devendran had initially been invited to play for the team he eventually played against. “Since he was a very good player, the upper-caste team had asked him to play for them,” the father said. “But he refused and decided to play for the opposing team.”
Thanganesh said that this angered the upper-caste boys. But it was only at the end of the match that their anger truly spiralled out of control.
“What angered them the most was that my son, who was the captain of the team, lifted the trophy in his hands and celebrated,” Thanganesh said. “They were angry that a Paraiyar boy lifted the trophy high up in front of them and began to celebrate.”
He explained that after this, three members of the losing team began to plan an attack on Devendran. “Three days before the incident, they came near where we live trying to locate where we stayed,” Thanganesh said. “At that point, we had no idea what their intentions were.”
On the day of the attack, Thanganesh dropped his son off at the bus stop. “At 7.50 am he got into the bus. I was on my way back when suddenly I got a call from somebody saying that my son was being attacked,” he said.
When Thanganesh reached the spot, he found his son in a pool of blood, writhing in pain. “It all happened so quickly,” the father recalled.
Three of Thanganesh’s fingers were slashed, his head was bleeding and he had cuts and wounds all over his body. His father picked him up and rode to the hospital on a two-wheeler.
In early April, it had been over a month since the incident and Devendran was still in the hospital. Thanganesh said that his fingers still needed surgeries. “They tried to operate the thumb but there was no blood flow so they could not save it, another they cannot fix because I could not find the severed part,” he explained. “I looked for it everywhere and could not find it.”
Devendran’s physical health is also affected in other ways, Thanganesh said. “He’s normal for a while but then towards evening he gets a fever,” he said. The incident has caused his son mental distress too. “He’s worried about his mobility but he’s eager to get back to school and play kabbadi,” his father said.
Thanganesh said that his son had never tried to challenge any caste-related norms prevalent in the village.
“Many of us work in their homes, work under them and they only refer to us as ‘vada’, ‘poda’,” Thanganesh said, using the casual forms of “come” and “go”, considered rude in many contexts. On the other hand, “we have to always call them ‘ayya’,” he added, referring to a respectful form of address. “They won’t give us the same glasses to drink, we are not allowed to have a big moustache or twirl it. We are also only allowed to drive at a certain speed. If we drive over that speed, then they’ll question us, because we dared to drive fast in their presence.”
Further, he said, “They can walk on our streets but there are some streets we can’t walk on.” Though these rules and customs were often humiliating, he noted, “So far nobody in my family has got into any trouble with anybody. We just followed all the norms.”
Thanganesh said his son aspired to play kabbadi at the national level. Though he was not able to write his exams, the school has decided to pass him in all his subjects. The government has also promised the family a monetary compensation, of which they have received a part. Further, the government has assured the family that it would pay for the remainder of Devendran’s education. “In the first week or so, many people visited us and promised us many things,” Thanganesh said. “How much will materialise, I don’t know.” In any case, nothing can compensate for the devastation the family has suffered, Thanganesh said.
And the casteist treatment continues unabated. The father said that members of dominant-caste communities had been passing snide comments about the compensation the family received. “They tell my family that we’re lucky that we are getting this money,” he said. “And that we have achieved what we wanted.”
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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