Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 24: India's largest communist party is being accused of caste atrocities by a 39-year-old mother of two, a few hundred miles from where Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide.

Chitralekha has been on a dharna these past two weeks on a pavement outside the state secretariat here, after 11 years of battling alleged persecution by the CPM and its labour arm Citu "because we are Dalits".

Chitralekha had first grabbed the spotlight in 2005 when she became the first woman to drive an auto at hometown Payyannur in Kannur district, a Marxist stronghold 460km from Kerala's capital.

Now she is demanding that Congress chief minister Oommen Chandy keep his promise to allot her homestead land for rehabilitation.

"They (the CPM) have made it impossible for us to live in Edat (a neighbourhood in Payyannur)," Chitralekha told The Telegraph from under the tarpaulin sheet that is her and husband Sreeshkant's current address.

Activists from a few NGOs have been periodically arriving with food and spending some time with the couple.

"I sat on a dharna for 122 days outside the Kannur collectorate. I called it off last February after the chief minister asked the district authorities to allot 5 cents of land in a different part of Kannur to us," Chitralekha said. "We are still waiting."

She said her ordeal began in 2005 when she bought an auto under the Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana and began driving it.

"When I tried to park it at the auto stand, Citu, which controls the stand, refused to let me because I come from a lower caste," she alleged.

"They got angry when I refused to back down. I was threatened and, later, physically assaulted. On December 30 that year, some people burnt my auto at night."

She said the police didn't act "because even the cops live in fear in Kannur'', known for Congress-CPM clashes in the past and now for the Marxists' battles against the RSS-BJP.

Chitralekha says that in 2006, armed men had attacked the family at home. They shifted to a different location for a while but, unable to afford the cost of living, returned to their old home.

"In 2008, some well-wishers gave me a new auto. Enraged Citu men started targeting me again. Even my daughter was assaulted but I didn't give up.''

In 2010, the government gave the family a second auto, which Sreeshkant now drives.

As the media reported Chitralekha's plight, making her famous locally, the Kannur CPM accused her of misusing caste discrimination laws and attacking neighbours.

In April 2014, the local CPM organised a march by about 300 people to the Payyannur police station demanding action against her.

"It's the Congress in power now. Yet the police, instead of acting on my complaints, arrested my husband under the stringent Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act on a complaint from the CPM. He was in jail for 32 days," Chitralekha said.

P.K. Sreemathi, Kannur's Marxist MP, said: "The CPM has no connection with the Chitralekha case."

State Congress spokesperson Pandalam Sudhakaran said he would contact Chandy and find a solution at the earliest.