(Palakkad): Resentment is brewing among the residents of the Moorthikunnu colony of Malaya tribespeople at Kadappara here a day after three of its representatives, who tried to meet Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at nearby Vadakkancherry to apprise him of their land rights issue, were allegedly subjected to ruthless police action.
Olankara Ratheesh, a tribal promoter appointed by the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Department, was detained along with Pattika Varga Gothra Maha Sabha leaders Kollangod Manikantan and Muthalamada Raju by police personnel led by Alathur Deputy Superintendent of Police V.S. Muhammed Kasim on the suspicion that they had Maoist links.
The officials had forcibly taken them to the local police station for interrogation and allegedly disrobed them to check whether they carried any weapon. It was following a public protest that the tribesmen were allowed to go home and that too only after the Chief Minister left the venue of a mega folk art festival in Vadakkanchery.
“It was on the advice of Scheduled Tribes Welfare Department Tribal Department officials that we reached the folk arts festival venue to meet the Chief Minister . The police took three youngsters who were with me from outside the festival venue without citing any reason said village elder Velayudhan.
The government had recently backtracked on its promise to allocate 14.67 acres of reserve forestland to the Moorthikkunnu tribe who waged a protracted land rights agitation. While the Revenue and Scheduled Tribes Welfare departments supported the striking landless tribals, the Forest Department had backtracked from the promise to provide land rights saying the agitating tribals would not come under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.
