Chennai: BJP man held for Facebook post on Mecca
Vel Murugan, who runs a computer centre, was given the post in the BJP's IT wing in March this year
By : v.p. raghu
Update: 2015-09-16 05:40 GMT
Chennai: The Tamil Nadu police arrested Vel Murugan, executive council member of state BJP’s IT wing, for his Facebook post on the Mecca tragedy which took place on September 11. In his post, Vel Murugan, who is from Thirumangalam near Madurai, had expressed joy over the recent Mecca crane tragedy in which over 100 people were killed. His subsequent comments were in the nature of denouncing members of a particular religion.
The controversial post had generated sharp reactions from a group of FB users who had set up a fake account with his picture on it besides showering abuses on him. Sensing trouble, he deleted his posts on the Mecca tragedy. However, the police arrested Vel Murugan based on a complaint from Ajmir Ali of Thirumangalam.
On Monday, the police booked him under various IPC sections dealing with promoting enmity between two groups, intending to outrage religious feeling, inciting people to commit offence against another community and publishing a statement inducing public mischief.
Vel Murugan, who runs a computer centre, was given the post in the BJP's IT wing in March this year. Police, cyber and security experts say that FB users should understand the social media platform is an open public forum where one should be careful while expressing views and also while posting pictures. It may be recalled that the Ramanathapuram police had a year ago arrested two persons for posting pro-ISIS pictures in a FB account.