All is not well in Tamilnadu. Police opened fire on protesters who went on a rampage today demanding the closure of a copper smelting plant in Tamil Nadu’s port city of Tuticorin, prompting the ruling AIADMK government to issue appeals for calm and a promise to take legal action against the plant.
A statement by the state government did not specify the casualties in the clashes and senior police officers claimed that they could not confirm the number of deaths.
Senior Tamil Nadu minister D Jayakumar, however, appeared to confirm that there were deaths when he spoke about compensation for the injured and those “shot dead”.Local media reports say at least nine people had died in today’s protests
Thousands of local residents have been protesting for more than three months against the Sterlite copper smelting plant and its reported expansion but complained that the state government had not responded to their demands.
