THENI: In one of the worst incidents of mob frenzy over the ongoing Mullaiperiyar dam safety row, nearly 500 women estate workers from Tamil Nadu were held hostage and some of them allegedly sexually harassed in Idukki district in Kerala on Monday. Theni district officials here swung into action and held a series of parleys with their counterparts in Idukki to rescue the women late on Monday night.
“We received an alert that nearly 500 women from Cumbum and Theni who had gone to Idukki to work in the private cardamom estates were detained there since Monday afternoon. We held talks with the Idukki Collector and the Kerala police and managed to rescue the women from the Kumili-Tamil Nadu checkpost at Thekkady. Our police too played a decisive role in the mission,” Theni Collector K S Palanisamy told Express.
Some of the distraught women to whom this correspondent spoke to were in tears while narrating their ordeal in Kerala. “We had gone to work in the estates. Around 2 pm on Monday we received a call from our family members asking us to rush home as some Ayyappa devotees from Tamil Nadu were attacked in Kerala. While we were returning, groups of men surrounded us and began harassing us. They pulled the sarees of the younger women in front of every one and laughed. Since we feared for our life, we stood helplessly,” said Karuppayee, a 50-year-old from Cumbum. She is still disturbed by the development.
Muthupachi, also of Cumbum, said the Malayali men hurled abuses at them. “They kept teasing and derogatively referring to us as ‘Pandi’ (a common abusive reference to Tamils in Kerala). We can’t even narrate the sexual harassment which the younger women in our group were subjected to,” she said. Later, after the intervention of the estate owners, the women managed to reach Thekkady in vehicles arranged by them.
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