SALEM: It was a spectacle in rewind mode for the people of Salem as 23 families of Angammal Colony on Sunday took physical possession of their lands, from where they were allegedly driven out by henchmen of former minister and DMK bigwig Veerapandi Arumugam, four years ago.The occasion was marked with celebration followed by a feast. They then got down to work and started putting up huts in the places where they lived. The place was christened Cauvery Nagar, with the hope that the memory of Angammal Colony as a land of dispute would be erased. This scene was in stark contrast to the aggressive support the system gave the group of land sharks who evicted them by force on a February night in 2008. Months after the eviction, when they tried to enter their lands, they were stopped by police and officials of the revenue department. They were even arrested during the innumerable protests they undertook persistently. “More than a battle won for land it was a battle won for their tenacity,“ said Haribabu, a lawyer and former president of Centre for People’s Civil Liberties, the organisation which gave the residents legal and political support.G Priya, wife of G Gunaseelan, was in tears as she recollected the night they were evicted and their houses razed by bulldozers. “An old ailing resident was lifted from his cot and thrown on the road. He died of shock a few days later. I dread to recollect the days we lived on roads because house owners refused to give us houses on rent as we had a dispute with Veerapandi Arumugam,” she said. Ganesan (68) recollected the constant fears that haunted him over the years.Gunaseelan said, “We waited for the government to organise a formal takeover, but officials dithered. So we met officials in the Chief Minister’s office and received a positive indication from them for our idea of taking our land ourselves.”
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