Tamil Nadu BJP secretary Suryah produced before Madurai judge

Madurai (Tamil Nadu) [India], June 17 : Bharatiya Janata Party's Tamil Nadu secretary SG Suryah who was arrested by Madurai district cybercrime police in Chennai, in connection with his recent tweet against MP Su Venkatesan, was produced before the judge in Madurai on Saturday.

The BJP leader was arrested on Friday night on the basis of a complaint filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Madurai Police brought Suryah from Chennai to the Madurai judges' quarters with heavy police protection.

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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."

In his tweet, Suryah had alleged that the CPI (M) MP Venkatesan had kept silent when his 'comrade' Vishwanathan forced a sanitation worker to clean a drain filled with faecal water due to which the worker died of allergies.

Suryah had written a letter to CPI (M) MP Venkatesan strongly criticising the incident.

Suryah alleged that the deceased sanitation worker was forced to resort to manual scavenging despite being aware that such practices are prohibited by law. 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 ANI.

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.