Hubballi: Sixty-one- year old Mallavva Chulaki of Yamanur has been travelling often over the last couple of weeks to Ballari and Chitradurga jails, where her husband and two sons, arrested for violence during the Mahadayi stir, are lodged.
She is only one of several women from the village , who are having a hard time since their husbands and sons were put behind bars. They are relying on a sympathetic builder, who has arranged two buses to take them to the Ballari, Chitradurga and Bengaluru jails, to visit their men.
In the absence of the farmers as many as 22 familes in Yamanur village and several more in other villages of Navalgund taluk are looking at a poor harvest despite the good crop and abundant rainfall this year. Many did not celebrate Nag Panchami with the arrests and alleged police assaults on women proving a dampener.
“We suffered a huge loss last year due to the drought. But now that we have grown maize and cotton over 16 acres and are expecting a better yield due to the rainfall this year, we could again face a loss as the police have arrested both my sons and grandson,” said a distraught 86-year old farmer Budansab Eligar of Yamanur.
Kenchamma Javalageri (75) of Yamanur, whose son runs a shop selling puja items to devotees of a temple-cum-dargah, laments that she is struggling to make ends meet with both her sons in jail following the Mahadayi violence.
While she like others in the village are waiting for the early release of the men from prison, several villagers, who had left home fearing arrest in the aftermath of the agitation, are returning, providing some solace to others, who have nothing to go on but hope currently.
