Ground Zero
Hindalga in the border district of Belagavi is one of the most picturesque villages in Karnataka. The hamlet, which is within 20 km of the Western Ghats range, is home to around a thousand people as well as an early 20th-century heritage prison where some of the country’s most notorious criminals, including death row convicts, are incarcerated.
After a century, the postcard village recently celebrated the local temple fair for which it got a makeover. Its patchy roads were re-laid amidst a slew of development works. But these very projects that the villagers had enthusiastically welcomed appear to have cost one of its residents his life. An alleged suicide of a resident of this little village has blown the lid off the underlying rot in the larger system.
