India: Brutal murder of environmental activist and human rights defender Mr. B Mohan
Event- Country
- India
- Initial Date
- Feb 6, 2019
- Final Date
- Feb 6, 2019
- Event Description
About the Human Rights Defender B Mohan was 45 year old and a resident of Palangulam, Melakottai of Ilamanur village in Ramanathapuram District of Tamil Nadu. He was an environmental activist and a former Panchayat President. Mohan with the help of his fellow villagers had formed a group to monitor and check illegal quarrying from water bodies in their area such as Purandi water tank and Puluthikulam water tank. These tanks serve as a source of water for the entire village and used for irrigation and drinking waterpurposes for the village people. The objective of the group was to protect and enhance the quality of water bodies in the area. The sand mafia often target water tanks to illegally mine the sand. Details of the Incident: According to sources, on June 2, 2019, in the evening around 3.30 pm, Mohan along with his friends Murugesan, Selvam , Lakshmanan, Kumar and Sathaih, went to the Purandi tank in the village for bathing. Suddenly they heard some noise from a nearby place called Puzhithikulam and at this moment they moved towards Puzhithikualm. Upon their arrival in Puzhithikulam, they found that Jeyabharath and Karthik of MSK Nagar, Anand of Marappalam, Muniasamy of Peravur, Harish of Vandikkara Nagar and some others were illegally extracting sand from Puzhithikulam tank using a JCB. Mohan told Jeyabharath that according to the government regulations sand can be extracted up to 3 square feet from Puzhithikulam and questioned him for extracting sand up to 15 square feet depth. On being questioned, Jeyabharath got angry and he along with his group attacked Mohan and his friends with iron rod and sticks. In order to save life, they all ran. Mohan was chased down by the perpetrators and was again taken to the Puzhithikulam tank. They pushed him in the tank, forcefully drowned him in the water and killed him. The perpetrators took Mohan's body in a Maruti Alto car to Ramanathapuram Government Hospital and threw the body outside. Mr Padmanabhan s/o Raju, brother in law of Mohan. went for a bath around 4:15 pm on June 2, 2019 to the Purandi tank. On his way he met Lakshmanan, who was running back to the village to save his life and inform villagers regarding attacks on him, Mohan and others. Lakshmanan told Padmanabhan about the events and Padmanabhan then rushed to the crime spot. On finding no one there, he rushed towards the hospital where he found Mohan's body. He called the police from mobile number 8300031100 around 4:40 pm and they arrived around 5:15 pm. Lakshmanan, Selvam, Murugesan, Sathiah, and Kumar were also seriously injured and were taken to the government hospital by 108 Ambulance almost an hour after the incident. On June 2, 2019, nearly 200 people gathered and protested on the MaduraiRamanathapuram road. Again on June 3, 2019, village people organised peaceful protests at the district collector's office. Some villagers also tried to self-immolate themselves in protest against Mohan's brutal murder. Despite registration of the FIR 166/2019 at 8 pm on June 2, 2019, the accused are still not arrested.
- Impact of Event
- 5
- Gender of HRD
- Other (e.g. undefined, organisation, community)
- Violation
- Death
- Killing
- Violence (physical)
- Rights Concerned
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- Right to life
- HRD
- Community-based HRD
- Environmental rights defender
- Land rights defender
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Extractive industries
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 20.593683
Longitude: 78.962883
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 2 June 2019, B Mohan, Indian environmental and land rights defender was brutally murdered.