Granite baron's abuse case exposes India's systemic impunity for elite perpetrators and institutional failure to protect children
Original framing: “One heartless granite baron and many hearts of stone: The continuing agony of R Veeramani's child victims” — bing news
The victims' mothers — predominantly Dalit women working as quarry loaders — describe a 'double silence': police refuse FIRs citing 'lack of evidence' while quarry contractors threaten job loss. One mother stated: 'They took my daughter's childhood and my ration card in the same week.' The National Dalit Movement for Justice documented 14 similar cases in Madurai district alone (2020-2023) where POCSO charges were dropped after 'compromise deeds' signed under duress. Adivasi children from the Paliyan community, trafficked into quarry bonded labor, fall outside POCSO's radar entirely — their testimony inadmissible without 'competency certificates' no court provides. The media's 'heartless baron' narrative erases these structural violences, rendering the baron exceptional rather than emblematic.
The Veeramani case is not an aberration but a revelation of Tamil Nadu's granite-political complex: a closed loop where quarry revenue funds electoral machines that capture police, courts, and child-welfare committees, while caste-power networks ensure Dalit and Adivasi children's bodies remain extractable resources.
The media's 'heartless baron' frame performs exactly the individualization that preserves this structure — as the trickster POCSO Act demonstrates, legal rigidity without community power becomes a weapon for the powerful. Restoring the 'kaval' logic through community-controlled courts, severing the revenue-immunity link via conditional mining licenses, and breaking economic coercion through universal child allowances would together dismantle the architecture of impunity. The 14 Madurai mothers who lost both daughters and ration cards in one week are not victims of one baron but of a system that has made their silence profitable for every party in power.