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BJP lodges complaint against DMK IT head over ‘offensive image’
The BJP leader, Amar Prasad Reddy, a close aide of Tamil Nadu’s party president K Annamalai, has filed the complaint under the category of hate speech and cyber crime for “demeaning Lord Maha Vishnu and hurting Hindu sentiments.”
Chennai A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has filed a police complaint against DMK’s MLA and ruling party IT head TRB Rajaa, charging him with tweeting an offensive image of Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar.
The caricature is of Savarkar flying on what resembles to be a crow and next to him Lord Vishnu mounted on a Garuda is depicted. The tweet has since been deleted. BJP leaders have shared screenshots of the tweet objecting to it.
The complaint comes in the context of the recent controversy in Karnataka where a chapter in a Kannada Class 8 textbook says that when Savarkar was jailed in the Andamans, there wasn’t even a key hole but bulbul birds visited him and he used their help to fly out of the jail to visit his mother land.
Rajaa had also posted the tweet accompanied by a hashtag #VadiveluVersion. Vadivelu is a Tamil film comedian. The BJP leader, Amar Prasad Reddy, a close aide of Tamil Nadu’s party president K Annamalai, has filed the complaint under the category of hate speech and cyber crime for “demeaning Lord Maha Vishnu and hurting Hindu sentiments.”
On September 5, the Tamil Nadu police announced that they have set up a team to monitor hate messages, fake news on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
BJP national secretary B L Santosh took to Twitter to describe this move as a “next level intimidation” after DMK’s bullying failed to “silence nationalist voices.” Following Rajaa’s tweet, BJP’s state secretary S G Suryah said that the Tamil Nadu new social media team should set an example to show that they will follow the rule book and take action against the DMK leader.
The DMK has not reacted to this incident.
