Translation of the testimony of the woman who took Panchayat President Krishnaveni to hospital. Chellamma narrates how she found Krishnaveni and took her to hospital and how she was arrested shortly afterwards. The testimony is from the report on ‘Murderous attack on the Thalaiyuthu Panchayat President Mrs. Krishnaveni; Investigative field visit conducted by Collective of Socially Concerned Academicians, Writers and Human Rights Activists – Tirunelveli – on June 18-19, 2011′. The facts noted by the Collective and their recommendations are available in two parts: Read the first portion here and the second portion here. Testimonies of Krishnaveni and her daughter are already available in translation.
(Download the the entire Fact-Finding Report in Tamil here)
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Chellamma (50), from the Nadar community
On the day of the incident, I was at the house of the Panchayat President. I had gone there to fill the form for the Old Age Pension. If that lady wrote it by night, then the next day [I could give it] at the Jamabandhi where the revenue officials would be coming, they said. So I was waiting in her house. Since it was late, I called Veni [Krishnaveni]. I told her, ‘I am at your house only’. She inquired about her children. ‘The older girl has gone for tuition, the younger one is making rice,’ I told her. As it grew late, I called her again. She told me that she was taking an auto and told me to wait at her house. I waited. After some time, we heard the sound of an auto and came to the gate. No auto came. Thinking that someone else was crossing in an auto, we went back in.
After more time passed, I told the children to lock up and go to sleep and that I would come back in the morning. When I came near the Karuppasamy temple, I saw the auto standing there. Wondering where the driver had vanished to and why an auto was standing there unattended, I went closer to look. In the backseat, Veni lay covered in blood. I went knocking on the door of nearby houses saying, ‘Oh no! They have hacked Veni.’ I ran and brought Veni’s children. They also went knocking on neighbour’s houses’ doors, saying, ‘They have hacked mother’. Then we told one person to call the police. We told them, ‘They have hacked and cut up a woman, come immediately’. We called 108 for the ambulance. It didn’t come.
We took some water and sprinkled on her face. Veni slightly moved her head. I said, ‘See, she is alive, get an auto, let us go to hospital’. No auto would come. They said they would have to run around about the police case afterward.
Then there was a boy on our street who knows how to drive an auto. I made him start the auto that Veni was in. I promised him that he wouldn’t have to worry about any case, that I would take care. One hack of the sickle had broken Veni’s chain. I took it off and gave it to her daughter. We bandaged her with a towel so that there won’t be too much blood loss and we went. The auto had blood all over. Blood had clotted on the floor of the auto. If some more time had passed and we hadn’t found her, she would have died of bleeding. The people who hacked her also would have left her because they thought she was dead.
The police came and took me away saying that a complaint had come that I had set a hut on fire, near Subbu’s house. I told them, ‘Sir, I have not done anything like that’. They brought my son also and said that I had only done it. They put an FIR also. Palthurai Inspector came and said, ‘Why don’t you just put a case on this woman and send her to Vellore [Vellore Jail]? Why are you keeping her here?’ Both my sons had to spend some Rs. 2000 to get me out. I was in the station till night. Then they said that the person who had burnt the hut was not me and that I could go.
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To be contd.
Testimonies of others interviewed follow in the next posts.
In response to the brutal attack on Thalaiyuthu Panchayat President Krishnaveni, this is the nineteenth in a series of posts about attempts on the lives of dalit panchayat presidents. This attack has hospitalised an award-winning and popular elected leader and underlines the threat that caste poses to democracy.
