In February 2022, the Tamil Nadu government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court. The message was unambiguous: the state would not permit the India-based Neutrino Observatory inside the Bodi Hills of Theni district. CM MK Stalin personally wrote to Prime Minister Modi asking the Centre to drop the project entirely.
The reason given? The Western Ghats were too precious to disturb.
On 17 January 2025, a man named K. Jagabar Ali left the Kattubhava mosque in Thirumayam taluk, Pudukkottai, after Friday afternoon prayers. He was on his motorcycle, heading home. A tipper lorry rammed into him. He died on the spot.
The police filed it as an accident.
It was not an accident.
Police later confirmed it was a premeditated murder, planned and executed by individuals associated with an illegal stone quarry. The same quarry Jagabar Ali had been exposing for months. The same quarry that was operating on permits that had expired on 13 November 2023. The same quarry against which he had filed complaint after complaint with Pudukkottai district administration, provided GPS-stamped evidence, and even obtained a High Court order for investigation, to which the administration responded by asking for “more time.”
In his last media interaction on 13 January 2025 – just four days before his death, Jagabar Ali stood outside the Pudukkottai collector’s office and told reporters that authorities had been protecting the quarry operators. He said he had no choice but to organise a public protest. Four days later, a lorry killed him.
The photographs in the image below, GPS-tagged sites across Meyyapuram, Kathvapallivasal, and Thulaiyanur in Pudukkottai, are the evidence he had collected. Published in the PUCL Bulletin. Documented at personal risk. Paid for with his life.
💡Tamilnadu + DMK protested the India-based Neutrino Observatory, fear-mongered it would damage the Western Ghats, despite strong support from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Yet today hills across the state are being torn apart by rampant illegal quarrying.
Illegal quarrying > Science pic.twitter.com/xMephr3mZi
— Saikiran Kannan | 赛基兰坎南 (@saikirankannan) March 11, 2026
This is what the DMK government’s relationship with Tamil Nadu’s ecology actually looks like – not in rhetoric, but in practice.
What the INO Actually Was
Let us be precise about what was killed in 2022, because the activists who opposed it were never precise about what it actually was.
The India-based Neutrino Observatory was a ₹1,500 crore underground science laboratory proposed inside the Bodi West Hills in Theni district – a cavern carved inside a mountain, approximately 2 km from the nearest village, with zero surface industrial footprint. Its purpose was to study neutrinos, which are subatomic particles that pass through the entire Earth without reacting with anything. No radiation. No emissions. No chemical discharge. No surface mining. Just physicists, instruments, and darkness inside a mountain.
The project had cleared multiple environmental reviews. It had the backing of TIFR and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Nobel laureates Arthur McDonald and Takaaki Kajita, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics for neutrino research, personally appealed to Tamil Nadu to allow it. Padma awardees, national science academies, and hundreds of researchers urged CM Stalin to support it.
And then there was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.
India’s most beloved scientist-president wrote extensively in support of the INO. He gave the project team permission to use his statements publicly. He called INO a dream that would take India forward. He personally asked Tamil Nadu’s people and its government to embrace it and to “defeat the forces of ignorance” opposing it through rational thought.
The DMK said no anyway.
Vaiko, a DMK alliance partner, began a padayatra from Madurai to Cumbum against the project, flagged off by MK Stalin himself. Nobel laureates on one side. A padayatra on the other. The Tamil Nadu government chose the padayatra.
The Fear That Was Manufactured
What exactly did protesters claim the INO would do to the Western Ghats?
The arguments shifted constantly, as they always do when the goal is obstruction rather than engagement. Vibrations from controlled underground blasts would damage the ecosystem. The project was “near” a tiger corridor. The Western Ghats were too fragile for any human activity.
DMK’s own Supreme Court affidavit solemnly declared that the Bodi Hills “forms part of a significant tiger corridor” and that the Western Ghats is “a global biodiversity hotspot.”
Sacred language. Serious-sounding. Completely selective in application.
Because while Tamil Nadu was filing Supreme Court affidavits about biodiversity, the hills of Pudukkottai, the same district whose soil was “protected” from supervised energy extraction at Neduvasal, were being torn apart by illegal quarry operators. And the man who tried to stop them was run over by a lorry.
What the Quarry Mafia Did to Pudukkottai
Jagabar Ali was not a famous activist. He was a 58-year-old AIADMK functionary from Vengalur village in Thirumayam taluk – a man who ran a hollow block manufacturing unit and spent his spare time filing complaints. He had no political backing from the ruling party. He had no media handlers. He had a phone, a GPS camera, and the conviction that someone should document what was happening to his district’s hills.
What was happening was this: stone quarry operators in Thirumayam area were mining on expired licenses, extracting minerals far beyond permitted limits, causing massive revenue losses to the government. When Jagabar Ali provided evidence to the Tahsildar, officials leaked his information back to the quarry operators, who used 40 lorries overnight to dump extracted material back into the quarry to hide the evidence.
He complained to the district administration. He went to the High Court. He got an order. Nothing happened.
In his last press interaction, four days before his death, he said openly: “If we attempted to intervene, they would have nearly a hundred men with weapons, and we can’t do anything. We’re left with no choice but to meet officials, and if that doesn’t work, we have no other option but to gather people and protest.”
On 17 January 2025, the quarry mafia gave him their answer. A lorry. A roadside ditch. A staged accident scene.
Four persons were arrested, including a stone quarry owner. The CB-CID took over the case. The key conspirator, quarry owner S. Ramaiya of RR Sand Crushers, went missing. As of the last reports, he had not been found.
Jagabar Ali had exposed an ₹840 crore illegal mining scam in Pudukkottai. He was killed for it. His family lives in fear. The main accused is still missing.
This is Pudukkottai. The district the DMK protected from ONGC’s supervised engineers.
The Scale of the Statewide Destruction
Pudukkottai is not an exception. It is a window.
Across Tamil Nadu, 1,439 mineral quarries reportedly operated illegally between 2020 and November 2025 under DMK rule, according to the government’s own court admissions cited by PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss. In Tirunelveli, 53 out of 54 stone quarries inspected were found to be operating illegally. Four workers died when one of those quarries collapsed. Penalties of ₹262 crore were levied. Nobody went to jail.
On sand mining: the government permitted 7.51 lakh units. The Enforcement Directorate told the High Court that 27.70 lakh units were mined – nearly four times the sanctioned amount. Minerals are being smuggled across the border into Kerala. The Madras High Court warned of a CBI investigation into illegal mining on the slopes of the Western Ghats as recently as September 2024.
This is the Western Ghats the DMK was protecting from a neutrino observatory.
The Geometry of Selective Outrage
Hold these facts side by side:
Fact One: The INO proposed a sealed underground laboratory inside a mountain in Theni, with no surface mining, no emissions, no ecological footprint. Dr. Kalam supported it. Nobel laureates pleaded for it. The DMK killed it, citing Western Ghats ecology.
Fact Two: In Pudukkottai, the very district whose ecology was “protected” from supervised hydrocarbon extraction at Neduvasal, illegal quarries operated openly. A man who documented them was murdered. The main accused is missing. Officials who received his complaints leaked them to the operators.
Fact Three: Across Tamil Nadu, 1,439 illegal quarries functioned under DMK rule. Hills have been blasted open. Four times the permitted sand was mined. Workers have died. Activists have been killed. Nobody has gone to jail.
There is only one conclusion: the Western Ghats were never the concern. The ecology was never sacred. The tiger corridors were never the reason.
Supervised science was blocked. Unsupervised looting was permitted. And the man who tried to stop the looting was silenced with a tipper lorry.
What India Lost
The INO was India’s entry ticket into one of the most consequential fields of 21st century physics. Countries with neutrino observatories- Japan, the United States, Canada, Italy are at the cutting edge of research that feeds directly into nuclear energy science, medical technology, and national security applications. India had none of this. The INO would have been the foundation.
Dr. Kalam wrote that INO was a dream that would take India forward and asked Tamil Nadu to “defeat the forces of ignorance.”
The forces of ignorance won. And in Pudukkottai, they also killed the man who was fighting them with a camera and a complaint register.
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