There was tension in and around the city corporation office in Kalaburagi for the entire day on Thursday as pourakarmikas, working on daily wages, staged a sit in protest in front of the administrative office of the city corporation with the body of a pourakarmika who had allegedly died of starvation, due to the failure of the city corporation to pay their pending wages for the past 48 months.
Finally, in a pre-midnight swoop on around 200 pourakarmikas, the police resorted to lathicharge to disperse them. The police took away the body of Thippamma and buried it. They also arrested around 93 pourakarmikas for obstructing government servants from discharging their duties.
Three seriously-injured pourakarikas were admitted to the Government General Hospital. CPI(M) leader Maruti Manpade , senior Dalit leaders Arjun Bhadre and Suryakant Nimbalkar condemned the incident.
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