Areti Sathyavathi, age 55, belongs to Thundurru village. Her husband is a cancer patient. In spite of her difficulties, she has been agitating along with the villagers for a pollution-free village for the last two years.
A plan for constructing an Aqua food processing factory in Thundurru village was underway
Areti Sathyavathi, age 55, belongs to Thundurru village. Her husband is a cancer patient. In spite of her difficulties, she has been agitating along with the villagers for a pollution-free village for the last two years.
A plan for constructing an Aqua food processing factory in Thundurru village was underway. Nearly 16,000 tones of processed food would be made here for export. Huge quantities of chemicals like ammonia would be used in this factory for preserving the food items. This would result in 50,000 litres of waste water being released into a canal daily. This would pollute the water in Thundurru and the nearby 60 villages in this area, affecting the supply of drinking water and irrigation. This would adversely affect thousands of farmers and fishermen.
On January 22, nearly 3,000 people, including a large number of women, went to the Mega Aqua food park and stood courageously against the hooligans of the factory owner and the police, demanding that the construction of this factory be immediately stopped. On May 14, the Thundurru gram panchayat and gram sabha passed a resolution against the construction of the factory. Due to these protests, the construction of this factory was temporarily stopped.
But two months later, a 500 strong police force was deployed in the villages and section 144 banning any mobilisation was declared. Warrants were issued against some of the leaders who were in the forefront leading these protests and they were arrested. Some of the leaders had to go underground.
Then the women of the affected villages organised rasta rokos, vanta varpu, padayatra etc. Areti Sathyavathi was leading a peaceful demonstration demanding stoppage of the construction of the Mega Aqua Food Park. She was arrested on September 20, 2016 in Narsapuram, West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh. She was sent to jail on a blatantly false FIR under section 307. She was denied bail for 41 days. She has finally been granted bail by the High Court.
Areti Sathyavathi has become a symbol of struggle and an inspiration to women fighting against displacement and for rehabilitation and compensation in various districts of Andhra Pradesh.
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