The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `I was used to dispose of bodies'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 13, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`I was used to dispose of bodies'

By R.K. Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI, DEC. 12. P.K. Murugan was a class VIII student in Devarmalai High School in Erode district when he was picked up by the Karnataka Special Task Force on suspicion that he was an aide of bandit Veerappan's gang.

"The police kept me in their custody for three months," he says. Then, he along with more than 100 others were charged under sections of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).

Murugan and his father, T.P. Keladi, spent the next nine years in Mysore jail. "In 1996, some people were let out on bail. We were not fortunate," says Murugan, now 27, and an active volunteer of People's Watch - Tamil Nadu. They were released in 2001.

He says he is no longer afraid — he has seen it all. "My sister was raped and she was one of the many, many women who were taken away by the STF," he said on the sidelines of the Conference on Rights of People here today. He was one of the many who travelled to Chennai from the villages close to the mountains where Veerappan operated.

"This is a journey to make their voice heard in Chennai," said V.P. Gunasekaran of the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association.

His friend and fellow victim, Sivanayya from Kadambur village in Erode, went on stage and said that he was taken to an STF camp as he was returning from grazing cows one evening. For the next two years, he was used to dispose of bodies. "There were 66 in all. I don't know all the names. But I know four of them," he says and reels out the names — Subramani, son of Ankapasari, Devarmalai Krishnapandai, Sikka of Thalakkarai and Bommaiyyan of Gundrimalai.

Sivanayya, who speaks with a trace of Kannada accent, said that he was held under TADA and was in jail in Chennai for more than a year.

"There are still seven cases against me and a few others. Five in Gobichettipalayam and two in Bhavani." He held up a plastic bag, rather dramatically, and announced: "I have saved all the bus tickets that I bought travelling to courts. I can't even afford a good square meal for my family. See what they made me do."

Representatives of a clutch of human rights groups and Opposition parties were present to welcome the victims. "All the stories are painfully similar," says V. Suresh of the People's Union for Civil Liberties.

"The joint special task force was formed in 1993 to nab Veerappan. More than 1,000 people living near the hills were seriously affected by the STF abuses," says Henri Tiphagne of People's Watch. "In the name of encounter, nearly 200 people were killed. More than 1,000 escaped from death but they either suffer from one form of handicap or another," he claims.

Nakkeeran Gopal, Editor, Nakkeeran, said he understood the sufferings of the people in the area. He had extensively toured the villages where the affected lived. They had the right to compensation and the right to demand that the guilty be brought to book.

The conference demanded that the Sadashiva panel report [the National Human Rights Commission appointed the panel to look into people's complaints.

The panel submitted its report in December 2003, after sittings spread over three years] be made public. It wanted the Commission to direct the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments to give their responses to the panel in a week. If this was not adhered to, they wanted the NHRC to go ahead with their final considerations.

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