Ground Zero | An eye for an eye in southern Tamil Nadu

The rivalry between the gangs of Pasupathi Pandian and the Pannaiyars has spanned decades and claimed several lives in gruesome attacks, the latest being Nirmala Devi’s in September. L. Srikrishna, S. Vijay Kumar & P. Sudakar report on the internecine feud that poses a perennial law-and-order problem in the State

At around 8 a.m. on September 22, about a dozen daily wage earners, mostly women, sat under a neem tree in Nandavanampatti village in Dindigul district of southern Tamil Nadu. They had eaten their morning portion of pazhaya saatham (gruel made of leftover rice soaked in water overnight) with shallots and were getting ready to de-silt a tank under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). A 69-year-old woman, Nirmala Devi, was directing the labourers to quickly get to work without wasting time.

A short while later, when Nirmala Devi — heavy, with a wide forehead, a nose pin and glasses — sat alone in the shade, four men armed with long knives rode towards her on two motorcycles. They dismounted the vehicles, strode menacingly towards her, grabbed her by her hair and assaulted her with the sharp-edged weapons. As the helpless farm workers watched the crime in horror from afar, one of the masked men beheaded Nirmala Devi, who had by then collapsed in a pool of blood. The murderers picked up her head and drove away.