Dalits in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai protest defacement of Ambedkar portrait
Police said they are carrying out investigations to arrest the accused who defaced the portrait by pouring white paint over it.
Dalits from Attappatti village in Madurai district on Tuesday staged protests after miscreants defaced a portrait of Bhimrao Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution. The six feet tall portrait was drawn on a roadside wall in Melur Taluk, 430 km south of Chennai.
According to the Melur police, the portrait of the Dalit icon was defaced late Monday night and locals noticed it on Tuesday morning.
“Locals of Attappatti said that they noticed white oil paint was used to deface Ambedkar’s painting,” an officer at Melur police station said.
Villagers said that the Ambedkar portrait was drawn five years ago by a local artist named S Ezhil and was seen as a mark of Dalit pride.
Melur’s Deputy Superintendent of Police PT Subash, said the police are carrying out investigations to arrest the accused.
Earlier on August 25, a mob had vandalized an Ambedkar statue in Vedaranyam near Nagapattinam during caste violence between two groups.
The incident happened minutes after a section of Dalits allegedly set fire to a car of an Other Backward Caste (OBC) leader.
