Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Aadhav Arjuna has been booked by the Tamil Nadu police over his controversial statement calling for a revolution to oust the state government. Chennai cyber police booked Aadhav on Tuesday, September 30 on charges of causing provocation with intent to cause riot and making statements prejudicial to national sovereignty and intended to cause public mischief.
Aadhav’s now-deleted post on the X platform calls for insurgency in the state similar to the ones that toppled governments in Sri Lanka and Nepal.
The post read: “If you walk on the road, you will be beaten; if you express yourself on social media you will be arrested. If the police become servants to the ruling class, then the only way forward is a youth revolution. Just as the youth and Gen Z in Sri Lanka and Nepal came together to create a revolution, a youth uprising will come here too.”
He went on to say that this revolution would put an end to “state terrorism” and effect government change.
The Sri Lankan protests in 2022, commonly known as the Aragalaya, were in response to economic hardships faced by the people. Nepal witnessed mass protests dubbed the ‘Gen Z protest’ earlier this month, following a government ban on popular social media platforms. It was a result of mounting discontent over government corruption and charges of nepotism and economic hardship for the general public.
A case has been registered against Aadhav at the North Zone Cyber Crime Police Station. He has been charged with causing provocation with intent to cause riot, acting prejudicial to harmony between different groups, spreading misinformation with intent to jeopardise national sovereignty and security, making statements to cause alarm or disturb public peace, and for publishing false information or rumour to promote enmity between groups.
Aadhav had, in a petition filed in the Madras High Court on September 28, claimed that the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) used police and local goondas to deliberately create chaos, cut electricity, and even stage midnight postmortem examinations to “suppress the truth” about the stampede that killed 40 people in a TVK rally on September 27.
He also accused the DMK of orchestrating the tragedy. The petition alleges that electricity lines were cut even before TVK chief Vijay spoke and that empty ambulances were driven into the crowd to create panic. He also called for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation into what had caused the stampede.