Parallel to the ongoing probe by the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission of Inquiry into the violence and the police firing on anti-Sterlite protesters that left 13 dead, the police department has been gathering statements in its defence by distributing questionnaires to the staff of the Thoothukudi Collectorate.
According to sources in the Revenue Department, the police, on Saturday, kept a printed questionnaire on the table of all employees seeking details of what happened in the Collectorate on May 22, the day of the firing.
The questionnaire sought details such as the name, the designation and date of birth of the employees. The staff was asked to declare “the nature of injuries” they suffered, if any, and the details of damage to the property (which the government said “anti-socials” had caused).
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“We are surprised as to why the local police are seeking such information when the matter is being investigated by a judicial commission and also probed by the Crime Branch CID. There was no intimation to us on this questionnaire either by the District Collector or other supervising officers,” an official in the Revenue Department said.
Since there was no clearance from the superiors, many employees refused to fill in the forms.
“There was information that police personnel in plainclothes dictated a prepared version asking some staff members to write in the forms,” the official said.
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Complaint to Collector
“We immediately convened a meeting of the Tamil Nadu Revenue Department Employees Association and resolved not to fill up the questionnaire. There is no need for the police to do this at this juncture. There is a CCTV covering the campus... none of the protesters entered our rooms. There was no assault or damage...the huge LED TV at the main entrance was intact,” he said.
Collectorate officials came to work on Saturday to compensate the holiday taken on account of Vaikasi Visakam in the first week of May.
“We are being forced to fill these forms in a way police want it. A resolution was passed in the executive committee meeting on Saturday to oppose this...we will formally lodge a complaint with the District Collector on Monday,” he said.
When contacted by The Hindu, a senior police officer in Thoothukudi district said he was not aware of any questionnaire being circulated among the Collectorate staff.
People’s Union for Civil Liberties national general secretary V. Suresh, whose team members brought the issue to his notice, said that this was being done in an official context.
The forms could not have been circulated inside the Collectorate without the direction and involvement of higher-ups, both in the District administration and the police, he said.
“They are trying to create alternative evidence to present a different picture on whatever happened on May 22. It is quite well established that even before people went to the Collectorate, vehicles were burning. Protesters only went up to the entrance and not into the Collectorate,” Dr. Suresh, who led a fact-finding team to Thoothukudi soon after the police firing, said.