The secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit, S.J. Suryah, has been arrested for “baseless and defamatory social media posts” against an MP of the CPM, which is an ally of the ruling DMK.
Suryah was arrested by the state cybercrime wing of the police in Chennai late on Friday night and remanded by a district judge in Madurai in 15 days’ judicial custody. In a social media post, Suryah had taken on Madurai CPM Lok Sabha MP Su. Venkatesan over the alleged death of a Dalit manual scavenger in “Pennadam” panchayat town. The CPM alleged that no such death had taken place and there was no Pennadam town in Madurai district.
Suryah, who has been critical of the DMK and its allies in Tamil Nadu on social media platforms, had questioned Venkatesan’s “studious silence” on the death of the sanitary worker while cleaning a manhole. Suryah had claimed that a CPM ward member had forced the worker to clean the manhole.
Suryah had followed up the tweet with a provocative letter to the Madurai MP, criticising him and the communists for their “revolutionary fervour and waving of red flags”, but keeping quiet “on the death of this Dalit brother”. Suryah’s letter also taunted Venkatesan for the CPM’s “double standard” as it would have “immediately pounced” on the BJP had the party been in power.
The Tamil Nadu state committee of the CPM on Saturday termed Suryah’s “malicious” social media posts as an attempt to “demean and malign” the reputation of both the MP and the party.
Assailing the BJP for launching a “deliberate, malicious slander campaign” against the CPM and its MP, the Left party said there was no such town panchayat named “Pennadam” in Madurai district.
“Without even an elementary knowledge of geography, they (BJP) are writing such posts on social media with the intent to blacken and defame the CPM when the whole country knows that the CPM has been at the forefront of the struggle to abolish manual scavenging,” the state committee said in a statement on Saturday.
The CPM’s Madurai urban district secretary, M. Ganesan, had filed a complaint with the Madurai cybercrime police against Suryah.
Hitting out at Suryah’s arrest, Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai tweeted: “The overnight arrest is highly condemnable. He has been arrested for criticising the dual role of the DMK and its alliance partner on social issues.”
“There is an anti-democratic trend in Tamil Nadu of arresting anyone who criticises the government’s activities,” Annamalai said, adding that attempts to stifle dissent by those “presenting themselves as guardians of freedom of expression” would not continue for long.
The CPM state committee said it was ludicrous that the BJP was talking about “freedom of expression”. The party said the BJP state secretary had made “false and defamatory” posts to “spread misinformation, which is the hallmark of fascism”.
Stalin grateful
DMK president and Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin has thanked Opposition leaders who have condemned the Centre’s blatant misuse of investigating agencies for political ends, against the backdrop of the ED’s arrest of minister Senthil Balaji in an eight-year-old cash-for-jobs case.
Stalin said “our secular progressive alliance” had shown unity and solidarity and that this message would spread everywhere and “shake the foundation of the BJP’s invincible image constructed through false narratives”.
