SG Suryah, the Tamil adu secretary for the Bharatiya Janata Party, was brought before the judge in Madurai on Saturday after being detained by the Madurai district cybercrime police in Chennai in relation to a recent tweet he made about MP Su Venkatesan.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) filed a complaint, which led to the BJP leader’s arrest on Friday night. Suryah was transported from Chennai to the Madurai judges’ quarters by the Madurai Police under strong police security.
Reacting to his arrest, state BJP president K Annamalai said on Twitter, “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.
Suryah said in a tweet that CPI (M) MP Venkatesan remained silent when his “comrade” Vishwanathan forced a sanitation worker to clear a drain loaded with faeces, causing the worker to suffer allergies and pass away.
In a letter to CPI(M) MP Venkatesan, Suryah harshly denounced the incident.
Suryah claimed that despite being aware that manual scavenging is against the law, the deceased sanitation worker was compelled to use it.
Suryah had attached the letter to Vishwanathan to his tweet in which the BJP leader questioned Venkatesan on his silence.
“Your fake politics of separatism stinks worse than that cesspool, find a way to live as a human being, mate!” a rough translation of his tweet in Tamil read.
Tamil Nadu BJP vice president Narayanan Thirupathy said there was nothing defamatory in Suryah’s tweet. “Nothing defamatory. In fact, it is a false complaint by Venkatesan. It is irresponsible on the part of the MP to have given a false complaint…The Govt is very clear to intimidate BJP workers, as told by CM Stalin…BJP will not tolerate this, ” Thirupathy told the sources.
Suryah’s arrest comes after DMK minister Senthil Balaji was sent to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) till June 23, in connection with an alleged money laundering case by Chennai Metropolitan Session court on Friday.
