B Mohan

Environmental Activist

Tamil Nadu

HRDA has issued an urgent appeal to the National Human Rights Commission of India on June 13 2019 regarding the brutal murder of environmental activist and human rights defender Mr. B Mohan by a Soil Mining gang.

On June 2, 2019, Mr. Mohan along with his friends Murugesan, Selvam , Lakshmanan, Kumar and Sathaih, went to the Purandi tank in the village for bathing. Suddenly they heard some noise from a nearby place called Puzhithikulam where they found that Mr. Jeyabharath and Mr. Karthik of MSK Nagar, Mr. Anand of Marappalam, Mr. Muniasamy of Peravur, Mr. Harish of Vandikkara Nagar and some others were illegally extracting sand from Puzhithikulam tank using a JCB. Mr. Mohan confronted Mr. Jeyabharath that according to the government regulations sand can be extracted up to 3 square feet from Puzhithikulam and questioned him for extracting sand up to 15 square feet depth. On being questioned, Mr. Jeyabharath got angry and he along with his group attacked Mr. Mohan and his friends with iron rod and sticks. In order to save life, they all ran away. Mr. Mohan was chased down by the perpetrators and was again taken to the Puzhithikulam tank. They pushed him in the tank, forcefully drowned him in the water and killed him. Despite registration of the FIR 166/2019 on June 2, 2019, the accused are still not arrested.

HRDA has prayed immediate and transparent investigation along with immediate action against police officials for negligence and non-arrest of accused till date.