AKUNURU (KRISHNA): With the presence of a police force of 400 and a woman’s body rotting on the road awaiting its cremation, Akunuru, a village of 4,300 people just 25 km from Vijayawada and close to Vuyyuru, looks anything but normal.Strange as it may seem, the reason for the unease is a colony of people not allowing funeral processions throught their area. The issue been flaring up off and on in the past several years but the death of a woman on Monday brought the issue to the fore once again. When the relatives of K Koteswaramma (80) tried to take the funeral procession through Malapalle to the burial ground, the residents of the colony did not allow it, as they have doing it for years, on the pretext that their children might get scared. Koteswaramma’s family members then took the help of some Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti activists and tried to take the funeral procession through Malapalle but police foiled the attempt which resulted in a scuffle between MRPS members and policemen. A 400-strong police force, including three ACPs and 10 CIs, was deployed in the village to maintain law and order. East ACP Mohammad Khan is monitoring the situation. Meanwhile, some villagers, in retaliation, placed tree trunks across the road to restrict the movement of the residents of Mallapalle. Both the groups remained admant and did not heed the appeals of police and revenue officials to end the deadlock.RDO Subba Rao and other officials are holding talks with the village elders to ways of ending the impasse as Koteswaramma’s body which, kept on the road to Kunduru, started decomposing. When joint collector Gaurav Uppal visited the village on Monday, her family members told him that they did not want to use the alternative route to the burial ground which is 5.4 km long. The distance through Malapalle, on the other hand, is just 1.3 km.Villagers belonging to other castes say it is not right on the part of Malas to prevent funeral processions through their colony as the road leading to the burial ground is not a private property. No solution to the issue has been found since 2006 due to differences among villagers who are divided on caste lines. It has become a serious issue now.When Velagapudi Lakshmi died on August 3, her family members performed her last rites on the road itself as the funeral procession was not allowed to pass through Malapalle. On coming to know of the row over funeral processions, secondary education minister Kolusu Parthasarathi visited Akunuru to resolve the issue. He had to beat a retreat when no Mala elder came forward to discuss the matter with him.On August 18 a 95-year-old woman, Pothanedu Ravamma, died in the village. When residents of Malapalle prevented her funeral procession, Ravamma’s family members cremated the body on NH-9 (Bandar Road) which resulted in a huge traffic jam. To avoid confrontation with residents of Malapalle, the family members of Nerusu Yedukondalu and Ranganayakamma took their bodies to the villages of their relatives and conducted the last rites there.
Comments
0 comment