TN BJP State Secretary SG Suryah  
Tamil Nadu

BJP state secretary SG Suryah arrested by Madurai police

SG Suryah was arrested by the Madurai police in relation to a social media post he made on June 7.

Written by : TNM Staff

Tamil Nadu state Bharatiya Janata Party Secretary SG Suryah was arrested by the Madurai police, on Friday, June 16. The arrest has been registered in relation to a social media post by Suryah against Madurai MP Su Venkatesan, made on June 7. He was arrested based on a complaint filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) district secretary Ganesan.

SG Suryah, in a letter addressing the CPI(M) MP Su Venkatesan, accused a CPI(M) councilor in Pennadam in Madurai of forcing a man to clean the sewers which allegedly led to his death. Tweeting the letter, he said, “A sanitation worker lost his life because of a communist councilor - Madurai MP Su Venkatesan maintains fake silence! Your fake politics of separatism stinks worse than that cesspool, find a way to live as a human being, comrade! @SuVe4Madurai @MaVeWriter” The statement was made on June 7 this year.

However, CPI(M) state secretariat member K Kanagaraj, speaking to TNM, said that there was no Pennadam town panchayat in Madurai or a councillor named Viswanathan, and that the allegation was a fabricated one. Meanwhile, a manual scavenging worker did die in Pennadam, which is located in Cuddalore, and the CPI(M) maintains that his death was due to unrelated health issues and the party cannot be blamed for that.

Suryah was arrested around 11.15 pm near his house in Madurai, and booked under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 505(1)(b), 505(1)(c) (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 66(D) (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology (IT) Act.

The state BJP president K Annamalai and other BJP functionaries have condemned the arrest. “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. Using state machinery to curtail free speech & getting jittery for the slightest criticism is unbecoming of a democratically elected leader and, indeed, are signs of an autocratic leader in the making. Drawing inspiration from autocrats, TN CM Thiru @mkstalin is turning the state into a lawless jungle. These arrests will not deter us & we will continue to be bearers of the uncomfortable truth!,” he said.

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