CHENNAI: A 23-members fact-finding team investigating the Tuticorin violence on May 22 and 23, where several people were killed in police firing, has submitted a report calling it a “total breakdown of civilian authority.”

Putting the death toll at 15 as opposed to the earlier 13, the 260-page report called it “unjustified and unwanted” murders. “The Tuticorin police continue the terror regime and people are not allowed to participate in programmes on the police firing,” said retired high court judge D Hariparanthaman after releasing the report, “The Day Tuticorin Burned,” at a function in Loyola College on Sunday. .

“By deliberately absenting themselves from the vicinity on May 22, the entire administration abnegated its duties in a cowardly manner and ceded all power to the police,” said the inquest team in the final report, adding, “it amounts to dereliction of duty of public servants” and was strongly contributory for the violence of the ill-fated day.

It also stated that police did not adhere to the standard operating procedures to disperse the crowd and questioned the presence of sharpshooters who were placed strategically. It adds that there is evidence of “unprecedented pre-mediated police planning with a view to maim or kill the protesters.”

“All deaths must be treated as murders at the FIR stage,” Hariparanthaman said, while criticising the judiciary for allowing the authorities to impose section 144 and demanded to end to the intimidation and arbitrary arrests of random people under the “open” FIRs registered against numerous unnamed people.

Retired IAS officer Christödas Gandhi termed the police as “unruly, uncontrolled and leaderless” mob

Several people had been detained illegally till date, said Henri Tiphagne of the team, adding that the report would be submitted to human rights forum on international, national and state level and plead for their intervention at the earliest.

