After a year long agitation against the Kundankulam nuclear power plant project, a fisherman was killed in police firing in Tuticorin on September 10, 2012 as the protests turned violent. The fisherman who was killed was Anthony Raj from Manapad village which is 80 KM from Kundankulam.
Raj was trying to storm the police when he was killed in the firing. The protestors had stopped the Mysore Express for a few hours while many others had blocked the national highways.
The police had released tear gas shells and cane charged the villagers in Kundankulam. Two of the policemen have been taken as hostage but were released later. There were hundreds of protestors who threw stones at the police and had also blocked the rail route.
A police official said that they had responded by firing a volley of bullets in the air which killed one protestor. Some of the protestors had even set fire in the local government office. Earlier the police had used tear gas to break up thousands of protestors on a beach near the Kundankulam nuclear plant which is in Tamil Nadu. More than 4,000 activists which were mainly women and children from fishing villages had camped in the beach which is a mile from the plant to protest against the threat of radiation.
