Too violent?
about 4,000 villagers, including 2,000 women, attacked an oxalic acid plant of Star Oxochem Private Limited (sopl) at Chipri village in Maharashtra's Kolhapur district on January 1, 2005. They destroyed 18 four wheelers, torched four imported cars and smashed several computers and pieces of furniture: a loss of nearly Rs 500 crore. They were protesting groundwater contamination caused by the plant. When the police entered Chipri to arrest some villagers, it faced the resistance of the entire village and went back empty handed. sopl's owner was forced to agree to the plant's closure a day later. D B Boralkar, member secretary, Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board (mspcb), Mumbai office, labels the incident as vandalism in the name of environment by miscreants posing as complainants.
sopl 's Chipri plant started functioning in 1998. Following strong protest by villagers, the mspcb closed it in 2002 but it was reopened a month later on the promise that it would follow some norms. This, the villagers allege, was not done (see Down To Earth,
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