Fed up with the attitude and force of the state government and police, villagers from Cavrem and Naqueri-Betul along with NGOs carried out a Morcha in Quepem and confronted the Quepem Police, Quepem Deputy Collector and BJP MLA Subhash Phaldesai.
It began on Wednesday morning, when the villagers of Cavrem where the recent developments took place and the anti-Defense Expo protestors from Betul-Naqueri along with NGOs gathered outside Quepem police station to protest against what they termed as the illegal arrest of Cavrem tribal villagers.
Cavrem villagers express disgust and rage at the cowardly acts of mining interests and demand again that all the persons involved in alleged illegal mining be arrested first, before the evidence of alleged illegal mining is destroyed under the guise of e-auction of extracted ore. They claimed that the alleged illegal mining interests have taken advantage of the absence of most of the residents of Cavrem during the Shigmo festival to rob large quantities of ore belonging to the nation, which was being guarded by the locals from the illegal mining nexus.
Calling the mining transportation that has been going for the last 2 days illegal, they stated that the villagers who were present at Cavrem were arrested under the pretext that they were restraining the traffic. As soon as the other villagers finished the Shigmo celebrations on Wednesday morning, they descended upon Quepem town in numbers and were soon joined by representatives of villagers from all parts of the State. Over 200 persons attended a spontaneous protest at the Quepem Police Station and took a morcha to the Quepem deputy Collector’s office at Municipal Garden. Slogans decrying the police, the Dy Collector, the MLA and the government resounded in Quepem town, and the villagers resolved not to allow any ore to be transported in the same manner as in the past, or by the same persons involved in the illegal mining that took place then.
The villagers also refuted the charges based on which some of the tribal villagers including a panch member had been arrested and alleged that they had been framed when they were in fact fighting to protect the state and that their prior demands for investigations or inquiries to the alleged illegal mining activities had been ignored.
