In Tamil Nadu’s Vengaivayal village, hatred as the shape of water

In an incident that shocked Tamil Nadu last month, human faeces was found in an overhead tank supplying water to Dalit residents of Vengaivayal village in Pudukottai district. One month on, the perpetrators are yet to be identified and caught despite a CB-CID probe

An uneasy calm shrouds Vengaivayal, a remote hamlet in the Annavasal block of Pudukottai district, even while a public outcry over the shocking incident of last month, when human faeces was found in an overhead tank that supplied water to the Dalits in the hamlet, refuses to die down in the State.

The hamlet, which can be reached by a barely motorable road branching off the Tiruchi-Pudukottai national highway at Sathyamangalam in Pudukottai district, is fully fortified by the police now as its 20-odd Dalit families are still struggling to come to terms with the public humiliation.