Tamil Nadu BJP Secretary SG Suryah has been remanded to 14-day judicial custody and is set to be transferred to the Chennai central prison. The arrest came following a complaint lodged by the CPI(M) Madurai district committee with regards to a tweet made by Suryah against Madurai MP and CPI(M) leader Su Venkitesan. In the tweet, Suryah claimed that Venkitesan had kept silent regarding the death of a Dalit conservancy worker who had been forced to enter a sewage pit in Pendanam, Madurai district by a CPI(M) councilor. The CPI(M) immediately registered a complaint stating that Pendanam was in Cuddalore district, and that such a death could not have occurred by the means suggested by Suryah.
Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister and a senior BJP leader, criticized the arrest of the BJP leader, calling it evidence of the two-facedness of the DMK and its ally, the CPI(M), on an important social issue. Sitharaman wondered why appropriate action was not taken against such deaths, instead of arresting Suryah for raising concerns about them.
Condemning Suryah’s arrest, BJP national general secretary (organisation) BL Santosh stated that the DMK could not come to terms with the recent arrest of minister Senthil Balaji and suggested that the BJP was a political party that would not take such unfair treatment laying down. K. Annamalai, the BJP Tamil Nadu state president, accused Chief Minister M. K. Stalin of using the state machinery to curtail free speech and noted that such behavior was unbefitting of a democratically elected leader. Annamalai stated that Stalin’s conduct showed the makings of an autocratic leader.
