Human Rights Forum (HRF) has demanded Anakapalle municipality to immediately stop illegal dumping of garbage at Achayyapeta village of Sundarayyepta panchayat in Anakapalle mandal of Visakhapatnam district.

Further, it condemned the use of police force to prevent the villagers from interfering and holding them in custody at Anakapalle rural, Kasimkota and Chodavaram police stations.

A two-member HRF team, which visited the area on Friday, interacted with residents of different villages and spoke with the officials. HRF state general secretary VS Krishna said villagers were against the shifting of the compost yard site from Anakapalle to Achayyapeta. He said the civic body has violated all laws and dumped the garbage on villagers, though the village panchayat had not given its consent.

In fact, residents of Sundarayyapeta, Achayyapeta, Mondipalem, Venkupalem and Seetanagaram have been resisting the attempt to dump the garbage in their villages by Anakapalle municipality for years.

On Friday, large contingent of police personnel moved in to assist the civic body staff to dump the municipal waste near Achayapeta. Anakapalle municipal commissioner S Muralidhar Rao personally supervised entire operation. When HRF members asked him whether the requisite permission from the AP Pollution Control Board was obtained, he replied in the negative stating that he had sought permission a couple of days ago, which is proof enough to say the dumping of garbage in village lands was illegal, HRF contended.