CPI leader blames police for violence

TRICHY: Welcoming the state government decision to appoint a commission of inquiry into the Paramakudi violence, that saw the killing of seven persons in police firing, state CPI leader D Pandian on Wednesday put the blame for the fiasco on the police saying if they had done their homework well, "at least the loss of life would have been averted."
Taking credit for the inquiry ordered, by a retired high court judge and not a DRO that the government was initially inclined to depute, Pandian said there were some "unknown facts" buried in the din of the highly sensitive episode, and hence the inquiry assumed greater importance.Pandian sought to make two clarifications: First that the violence at Paramakudi was unleashed even before Tamilnadu Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam founder John Pandian was detained by the police when he was on his way to Paramakudi, and secondly, that the initial spark emanated from a verbal clash between Pandian's emissaries whose convoy occupied the whole stretch of the road, and a woman sub-inspector who objected to their "highhandedness". She was allegedly manhandled and her uniform ripped in the melee.
Walking a tightrope between not criticizing his coalition partner and seeking to blame the police for the handling of the situation, the outspoken leader said the police must have known that the Madurai-Ramanathapuram belt had already witnessed the worst kind of caste-based riots between the same communities a decade ago, and every preventive action should have been taken in accordance with lessons learnt in the past. This is where the police erred, the CPI leader said. However, he was all praise for the AIADMK government for heeding his party's demand to probe the issue through a retired high court judge.
Turning his attention to the land-grab crackdown, he said the government was not being vindictive and that the cases filed were well established incidents of land grabbing. Moreover, about 200 land grabbers in the state including 37 in Chennai had already returned grabbed land to rightful owners when the government turned the heat on them. What was more, most of them coughed up more-than-market-rate prices in the fear of being prosecuted, Pandian said. Asked to be specific, he said the former Speaker in the DMK government, Aavudaiappan, had returned four pieces of grabbed land in Tenkasi to the rightful owners only to avoid arrest.