The Tamul Nadu Police have arrested the state BJP secretary, SG Suryah, in connection with an objectionable tweet against Madurai MP Su Venkatesan. Suryah was arrested by the the Madurai district cyber crime police in Chennai last night. The BJP has reacted angrily at his arrest and invoked free speech.
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted, “Use of police arrest for tweets/posts is REAL & TOTAL overreach n violation of right to due process of law n free speech. This was the normal tactic to silence by Rahuls Cong during UPA misusing Sec66A – recently its dynast allies too hv done it like @PawarSpeaks n now @mkstalin to prove he wasnt named after Stalin for no reason.”
He added, “Those Free speech “activists” who jump around at drop of hat must not remain silent now or be branded hypocrites.”
Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai tweeted, “The arrest of @BJP4TamilNadu State Secretary Thiru @SuryahSG avl is highly condemnable. His only mistake was to expose the nasty double standards of the communists, allies of DMK.”
In his controversial tweet, Surah had accused the Madurai MP of following the ‘fake politics of separatism’ which , according to him, ‘stinks worse than that cesspool.’
Tamil Nadu has been dominating the political discourse in Indian recently after the Enforcement Directorate recently arrested the DMK government’s Electricity Minister Senthil Balaji on charges of money laundering. The agency had also summoned the arrested minister’s brother in a case related to cash-for-job scam.