A day after a group of suspicious men were found roaming around Thuglak editor S Gurumurthy’s residence, the Chennai police have arrested eight men in connection with it. The arrested men are members of the Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, a splinter group of Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, as per a report in The Hindu.
On Sunday, around 3.15 am, a group of youngsters on motorbikes were found lurking around Gurumurthy’s residence in Mylapore. One of the men allegedly tried to ignite a petrol bomb. The police personnel who was on duty chased him away, thwarting an attempt to hurl the petrol bomb at Gurumurthy’s residence. Based on this incident, the police had registered a case and were looking for the accused by analysing CCTV footage around the area.
On scrutinising the footage, the police arrested eight men —M Sasikumar, M Balu, V Janardhanan, P Prasanth, R Deepan, E Sakthi, S Tamizh and K Vasudevan. They have all been booked under sections 147 (Rioting), 148 (Rioting armed with deadly weapons), 436 (Mischief with fire or explosive substance with an intent to destroy a house) and 511 (Attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life) of the IPC. One of the accused, Sasikumar, was also involved in similar attacks with petrol bombs in Woodlands hotel and Satyam cinemas.
The attempted attack on his residence comes as Thuglak, a weekly Tamil news magazine, is expected to republish its articles around the 1971 Salem rally, a matter of heated debate in Tamil Nadu political circles.
Actor Rajinikanth’s recent speech about the rally, at which Periyar EV Ramasamy was also present, at the Golden Jubilee event of the magazine sparked controversy after he said that Hindu gods were paraded naked and garlanded with slippers at the time.
His statements were met with severe backlash from Periyarists who denied that the gods were naked. They also emphasised that there was no garland of chappals on the gods at the rally and demanded an apology from Rajinikanth for ‘attempting to mislead people by stating wrong information.’ However, the superstar refused to apologise, stating that he had evidence for all that he said on stage.