A concrete wall that started to come up at a cemetery on Sowripalayam road at Puliakulam, demarcating a portion of land to St Mary’s Orthodox Syrian church, is now raising tempers between two groups.
Coimbatore Pentecostal Pastors Fellowship accused the Orthodox Syrian church of encroaching upon the cemetery by dividing and taking a section of land for their members while the cemetery was common for “all Indian Christians”.
“The 3.75 acres cemetery is common for all Indian Christians according to a court verdict. No one can erect a fence and claim ownership over it.
The Syrian church members are trying to encroach upon it by erecting a concrete wall,” Israel Ponnappah, president of the fellowship, told Deccan Chronicle here on Tuesday. The group had also petitioned the collector.
Mathew K. Davy, ex-officio member of the Orthodox Syrian church, claimed that they tried to erect a wall to about 5 feet to prevent anti-social elements from misusing their portion of the land.
“There was a court settlement in 1993 that demarcated different portions of land to different groups among the Christian community, besides a common site for all Indian Christians. We started to fence only the land that belonged to the Syrian Orthodox church and there is nothing to make an issue of that,” he added.
Tense moments prevailed at the cemetery on Tuesday when Ramanathapuram VAO went there to conduct an inquiry with the two groups. While the discussion was under way, a member of a particular sect, David, reportedly drove the car rashly into the cemetery, as if threatening the people. This led to a quarrel. Police arrested David for rash driving.