Chennai, March 22 (IANS)

The Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF) has said that a separate law is necessary for caste-related violence in Tamil Nadu. The state general secretary of the front, Samuel Raj in a statement said that this is necessary to tackle caste-related violence in Tamil Nadu.

He said that this was an old demand and that they were reiterating it again. The front general secretary said that the recent verdict of triple life imprisonment to the culprits in the murder of SC youth Gokulraj by the Madurai bench of the Madras high court was due to the persistent and single-minded effort of a lawyer B.B. Mohan and not by any intervention from the Tamil Nadu government.

Samuel Raj said that the state government has not created any special cells even after the Madras high court had directed in 2016 for the enactment of a separate law to prevent murders of inter-caste couples and an eight-point guideline to protect the couples.

He said that the state government in response to a writ petition filed by the TNUEF had stated that special cells have been created and furnished phone numbers of officers in charge of each district but nothing had happened and killings of intercaste couples have been continuing unabated.

The TNUEF general secretary said that there was no response from the authorities to the RTI filed on the condition of special cells created by the government.

The organization also passed a resolution which called upon the Tamil Nadu government to take into account the private members bill introduced by CPI-M’s A. Soundararajan in 2015 named ‘Prevention of murder, crime and compulsion in the name of Honour and Tradition 2015’ Bill and enact a law to prevent caste killings.