A casual night out turned into a fist fight at a popular nightclub at MRC Nagar in Chennai, with actor-turned-politician Karunas’s associates getting involved in a brawl on Saturday night.
CCTV footage from the night shows Karunas, an MLA and AIADMK ally, and his associates by the bar when an argument turns ugly. After one of his associates is pushed, a fight breaks out, with punches being thrown, men being kicked and even bottles being flung at each other.
Karunas, who attempts to intervene, falls in the midst of the fight. He is, however, seen walking away from the fight.
Even as other guests in the nightclub get out of the way, the staff quickly intervene and break up apart the fight.
An FIR has been registered against “Ajay, Dhamodharan and his friends”. They have been booked under IPC section 341 (wrongful restraint), 294b (sings, recites, or utters any obscene song or words in public place), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons), 307 (attempt to murder),505 (2) (statements conducing to public mischief). The inspector of MRC Nagar told TNM that a complaint was filed on Sunday morning by R Bharaneeshwaran, a businessman.
The FIR, however, does not name Karunas. The police inspector stated that the MLA was not involved in the fight. He added that the investigation is on and refused to divulge further information.
Narrating what happened on Saturday night to TNM, Bharaneeshwaran, the complainant said, “There is a group called Defenders, they are mostly advocates. There are two brothers Dhamodharan and Gopalakrishnan who are heading this. They all are part of Karunas’ party. I met Karunas at the club and then he introduced me to a person named Ajay and I shook hands with him. After which, I went back and sat on my seat when Dhamodharan came to me and said, ‘I’m defender Dhamodharan, I’m the general secretary of Karunas party and I’m the cousin of Ajay’.”
“He said that he is coming to me and speaking and I can’t respect him. So I said, ‘do you want me to stand up and salute at you?’ He immediately started hitting me and badly abusing me. From the back, Ajay jumped at me and broke a bottle at me. I fell down. After I fell, they were hitting me. First, six to seven people came and hit me on my face, it was bleeding badly. The hotel management came and stopped the fight,” he recounted.
Bharaneeshwaran said that the police were called to the club, and the crowd was sent outside.
He said, “I went out from the backdoor because those people were waiting outside the hotel. I went to the Royapettah government hospital and got first aid. Then went home but I still had giddiness. I filed the complaint on Sunday morning.”
The businessman added that Karunas had tried to stop the fight but his associates did not listen to him. “I have not had any issues with them in the past,” he said.
Bharaneeshwaran is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Chennai.
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