Chennai:

Human faeces found smeared on the lock of a mid-day meal cooking centre at a school have sparked outrage in Tamil Nadu.

The Namakkal district police are investigating the incident following a complaint by the school’s headmaster on Tuesday. “The school authorities gave a complaint only after washing off the faeces,” said Superintendent of Police S Rajesh Kannan.

“We have some leads. We should be able to crack the case in a few days,” he added.

Union Minister and BJP leader L Murugan has condemned the incident, urging the Tamil Nadu government to take swift action against those responsible. 

“This incident is as cruel as hurling faeces into a drinking water tank,” he said, referring to an incident at Vengaivayal in Pudukottai in 2022, where human faeces were found in a tank supplying water to an area where people from the Scheduled Castes are in a majority. 

Underscoring that no chargesheet has been filed in the 2022 case yet, Mr Murugan said,  “There is a deliberate delay in many of these cases”.

The Madras High Court also recently pulled up the Criminal Investigation Department (CBCID) investigating the case over the delay in arresting the culprits. 

Citing a Right to Information (RTI) reply revealing that the practice of untouchability is still prevalent in 445 villages across the state, the Union Minister claimed that the use of dual tumblers, the practice of having dual graveyards and other such discrimination continues under the ruling DMK. 

The DMK-led Tamil Nadu government is yet to comment on the incident.