41 fishermen families ostracised from village

Fishermen from Mamallapuram waiting outside the DGP’s office in the city to hand over a petition regarding their ostracization from their village.






G Saravanan
Published : 04 Aug 2009

CHENNAI: Life has changed a lot for 41 families of Mamallapuram fishermen village in the last 10 months, as a land dispute among the villagers has now snowballed into a major issue and divided them into two rival camps.


The elected fishermen head of the village Bhoopalan had ostracised these families for not ‘obeying’ his orders five months ago and even asked the remaining villagers to avoid speaking to them. The village has 300 families and all of them are engaged in fishing and its allied activities along the Mamallapuram areas for several decades.

It all began in October last year when the villagers quarreled over land donated to them by a private hotel in the neighbourhood a few years ago. The hotel had donated 1.5 acres, which was to be equally divided among all the families there.

However, village head Bhoopalan, under the influence of local land sharks, hatched a plan to do away with 91 families claiming that they were not permanent residents of the village.

While the 91 families unitedly met different officials to solve the problem, nothing worked as Bhoopalan maintained ‘close connection’ with many higher officials and even the local police (Mamallapuram) resisted filing any complaint against the village head.

According to villagers, Bhoopalan, using his dirty tactics, manipulated his position as a permanent village head for the past several years. During 2004, he was thrown out of the post for financial malpractices, but he returned to the post using his clout.

As time passed, Bhoopalan using his money and muscle power to drive a wedge in the unity of the rival group and weaned away 50 families to his fold. Bhoopalan ostracised the remaining 41 families and used every available method to indirectly force them out of the village.

But they resisted his atrocities, and in April, met the Kancheepuram district collector with their grievances.

In the last five months, though atrocities against these 41 families kept increasing, but the promised action from the government machinery never reached them.

To air their grievances directly to the top police official of the State, all the affected and ostracised families reached Chennai on Monday and tried to meet the DGP in his office. An Additional Director General of Police received their complaint and assured them of speedy redressal.

When contacted, Bhoopalan rubbished every accusations against him and said that everything in the fishing village is normal. When asked about the land issue, he refused to respond.