DINDIGUL: Members of about 200 dalit families have left their village in Dindigul district en masse in protest against the alleged atrocities by non-dalits and took shelter in a hillock on Saturday.

Efforts by police and revenue officials to placate the dalits to return to the village, Nadupatti, proved futile. The agitators demanded that the district collector should meet them.

"The collector would be holding talks with them on Sunday morning. We hope to resolve the problem tomorrow (Sunday) and the dalits would return to the village,'' said a police officer.

The dalits, along with their livestock, moved to the hillock on Saturday morning, marking the culmination of a series of events of alleged oppression by non-dalits over the past several months. The immediate spark for the dalits to resort to the step was a quarrel between 50-year-old Perumal, a dalit, and 30-year-old Balamurugan, a non-dalit from Kariyampatti.

Nadupatti and Kariyampatti are separated by a road. While Nadupatti is populated by dalit Arunthathiyars, the Kariyampatti has non-dalit Vanniyars.

Three months back, a group of non-dalit Vanniyar youth had attacked dalit youth of Nadupatti for wearing T-shirts bearing the picture of freedom fighter Ondiveeran, celebrated as a dalit icon. Eight Vanniyars were arrested for attacking the youth and later ransacking their houses for lodging a police complaint. However, there was simmering tension among the two communities. In the backdrop, the house of a non-dalit went up in flames in September, sparking more tension.

After the quarrel between Perumal and Balamurugan, the dalits erected makeshift fences around Nadupatti preventing non-dalits from entering there. Police personnel led by SP T Jayachandran visited the place and warned them against erecting fences. The police also removed the fence. Since the situation was tense, police personnel were also deployed in large numbers.

However, the dalits, alleged that they fear attack by non-dalits and started moving en masse towards the Jangalpatti hillock. Revenue officials led by assistant collector Madhusudan Reddy and police led by SP Jayachandran met the dalits and appealed them to return to the village. However, they refused.

