E-Paper
YouTuber Shankar held in TN drugs case: Police
Chennai police arrested YouTuber ‘Savukku’ A Shankar on Tuesday hours after the Madurai court issued a non-bailable warrant against him
Chennai police arrested YouTuber ‘Savukku’ A Shankar on Tuesday hours after the Madurai based Principal Special Court for Essential Commodities and Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act Cases issued a non-bailable warrant against him for failing to appear for proceedings in the case of allegedly possessing ganja.
Judge M Chenkamalaselvan posted the matter for December 20 and issued the warrant. “Following this a special team of Chennai police arrested him from his office in T Nagar. He will be handed over to the Theni police,” said police.
The special court had previously granted him conditional bail and during the previous hearing, Shankar’s counsel had sought exemption from appearing in person.
Shankar was previously arrested on May 4 from Theni by Coimbatore police for his alleged defamatory speech against women police to a Youtube channel on April 30. During the arrest, he was also found to have possessed 2.6 kg of ganga. He was then lodged at the central prison in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district.
Shankar was booked under Section 509 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) read with Section 4 of Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, 1998, Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Later, he was booked for several other cases such as the ganja case, for allegedly character assassinating a woman journalist and alleged forgery of tender documents of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA).
On August 9, the court had ordered that he should be released unless his detention is required in a slew of other cases filed against him. The court observed that there is an element of malice by the police. The state had slapped the Goondas Act on him twice. The Supreme Court had ordered his release on September 25.
