Elangamani residents seek Collector’s intervention to recover destroyed burial site

Representing over 100 families from Elangamani village in Vannangundu panchayat of Ramanathapuram’s Kilakarai taluk, villagers submitted a petition during the Collector’s Public Grievance Redress meeting here on Monday, demanding legal action against individuals who desecrated their community’s generations-old burial ground.

Sakthivel, a villager, said: “Some real estate businessmen used a crane to damage the burial ground that our community people had used for generations, ploughed it and erased the identity of the burial ground’s existence.”

Further, they were attempting to encroach upon the burial ground and use it as a public space, he added.

“Although we submitted complaint petitions to the Thiruppullani police and the Kilakarai Tahsildar, no action was taken. Moreover, the land that was a burial ground has been changed in the Revenue Department registry as government poramboke,” he alleged.

The Collector should take action against those who damaged the burial ground, reclaim it and take steps to register it in government records, the residents demanded.