Tension prevailed in Sugur village near here on Thursday as members of the Karnataka Dalit Sangharsh Samiti (DSS) staged a protest over refusal to allow a Dalit to be cremated on the land allotted by the district administration.
Police personnel were deployed in large numbers in the village, particularly around the disputed land, to prevent any untoward incident. Shivamogga tahsildar Satyanarayan visited the spot and held discussions with both the groups.
Injunction orderIn April, the district administration sanctioned 32 guntas of gomala land on the outskirts of Sugur to develop a cremation ground. But those who were engaged in the cultivation of this land brought an injunction order against outsiders entering it. On Thursday, Ramaswamy (60), a Dalit resident of the village, died. When his body was taken for cremation, those cultivating the land refused to allow it. A verbal duel ensued between them and a few DSS members. Following this, the DSS members staged a protest.
Call for resolving issueThey have refused to cremate the body elsewhere until the issue is resolved. M. Gurumurthy, secretary of the DSS, told The Hindu that the village has never had a cremation ground till now. The ‘upper’ castes would cremate the dead on their agricultural land, while Dalit families, most of them landless, used the Tunga riverbank.
