QUEPEM: The vexing issue of cremation ground used by Scheduled Tribe community in Gudi-Paroda resulted in a tense situation at Quepem Police Station on Sunday with around 200 people gathering there after travelling in a bus.
The crowd gathered at the police station because police had summoned panchayat member Rajashree Gaonkar following a complaint lodged with them by Jimmy Rodrigues.
As Rajashree belongs to the ST community, the large crowd rushed to the police station with her threatening to even move the courts to protect their crematorium.
Advocate Upaso Gaonkar speaking on behalf of the gathered people said that residents of four wards namely, Zariwado, Talewado, Kariaghat and Gudi cremate their dead at this particular crematorium.
“This crematorium belongs to the Scheduled Tribes community as their dead are cremated here and if necessary we shall even move the courts to protect our right,” he said adding that they will file a case under atrocities committed on the ST community.
Panchayat Member Rajashree Gaonkar while asserting that the crematorium is used by residents of four wards admitted that there is a dispute over the access to it.
Former sarpanchas of the village disclosed that the ST community has been using the around 4,000 sq mts of land belonging to the government for cremating their dead for years now.
However, in 2018, farmers who cultivate the fields behind this land, asked the panchayat to give them a road access to their fields to take machines to cultivate their land as mechanised farming had become a norm.
Following this request, in 2020 Inacio Tereza, the then Sarpanch of Gudi Paroda wrote to the collector asking for land to provide an access to the farmers. But nothing came out of this application.
Now suddenly somebody removed the cement poles the ST community had put up on the land and this led to the present tension.
Incidentally, Jimmy Rodrigues who lodged the complaint against the panchayat member is a former Sarpanch of the village and was also a Zilla Panchayat (ZP) member who has since migrated and settled in the United Kingdom.
Sources at Quepem Police station revealed that Jimmy had lodged the complaint when he came to Goa recently and that he was asked to lodge his complaint with the Collector.
