Officials start evicting encroachers of the area

Evicting the encroachers from the historical war memorial at Harohalli in Pandavapura taluk of Mandya district has finally begun.

The memorial, known as ‘French Rocks’, was set up in memory of French soldiers, who had come to Pandavapura to help Tipu Sultan during his battles against the British. Tipu Sultan had granted a plot to the French army for establishing a burial ground for soldiers.

The war memorial once had at least 65 graves of different styles and structure.

As the graves were architecturally significant and contained the details of names of deceased soldiers, age and their ranks and file etched in marble plaques.

Nevertheless, the local people had encroached a major portion of the graveyard by demolishing several graves.

Historians had been requesting the district administration to protect the memorials by evicting the encroachers.

A team of revenue officials, led by Assistant Commissioner of Pandavapura (Revenue) H.L. Nagaraju and tahsildar B. Shankaraiah visited the war memorial on Wednesday and cleared the encroachments. The team had destroyed various crops cultivated at the graveyard. Mr. Nagaraju said the taluk administration would initiate steps to facelift the memorial soon.

“We will first remove the weeds and then protect the graves,” he said.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / by M.T. Shiva Kumar / Mandya – August 27th, 2015