Following a report published by The Pioneer about the billboards put up by local Jamaat Councils in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu that ‘outsiders were not allowed into the villages’, police last week removed all the signboards displayed prominently at entrances to the villages.
Ramanathapuram Superintendent of Police NM Mayilvahananan has been quoted by a local daily that he ordered the removal of the boards since they had the word ‘Warning’. “Only the police can use the word ‘Warning’ in public places,” he told the reporter of a local daily.
Though the local daily report quotes a Baskaran (that too a changed name), as telling that the boards were never a bone of contention as it was collective decision to put them up, The Pioneer had carried comments from persons with original names and are known to everybody in the district.
Though MH Jawahirullah, the Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (an Islamist outfit) MLA representing the Ramanathapuram constituency said no fatwa has been issued anywhere in the district and the report about hoisting of national tricolour with chappals was false, he has conceded that a group of boys were fined by the police for hoisting chappals. What he left unsaid was the presence of national tricolour along with the chappals.
The report also quotes that the presence of the bill boards were of no concern earlier. “It is out of fear that nobody lodges a complaint,” said D Kuppu Ramu, an advocate and VHP leader who was once brutally attacked by Islamic terrorists.
Elsewhere in the Ramanathapuram district, there are instances of the Hindus living in perpetual fear because of the sheer strength of numbers of the Musilm community which is getting radicalised by the day.