Tamil Nadu: Rape case takes a full political turn
Chennai: The alleged sexual assault of a woman student inside the Anna University campus on December 23 assumed a complete political hue on Monday with the opposition parties turning aggressive by organizing protests and placing the blame squarely on the DMK's doorsteps with the ruling party turning the tables to accuse their rivals of causing needless panic that would affect women’s education and development.
While the political parties, particularly the AIADMK staged agitations all over the State, the National Commission of Women (NCW), to whom the BJP had appealed for an investigation, and the Special Investigation Team formed by the Madras High Court visited the campus and interrogated several people in the university like those involved in security and also the affected girl.
State Governor and Chancellor of the university, R N Ravi, who had visited the campus on Saturday and spoke to students and others there, had people calling on him at the Raj Bhavan to discuss the crime on Monday. Apart from the two-member fact-finding team of the NCW, comprising Mamta Kumari and Maharastra former DGP Praveen Dixit, president of Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) Vijay and BJP State president K Annamalai held discussions with the Governor.
Apart from Vijay and Annamalai, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami had issued statements making scathing attacks on the DMK government, which retorted through two Ministers. Higher Education Minister Govi Chezhian said Palaniswami was seeking political gain by raising the question ‘Who is that Sir,’ which as a hashtag trended on X.
The ‘sir’ referred to unidentified person, to whom the alleged rapist, Gnanasekaran, spoke over phone after assaulting the 19-year-old girl and also told her that she would have to meet him whenever she was asked to, giving raise to the impression that he was an accomplice in the crime.
The AIADMK IT wing had created the ‘Who is that Sir’ meme and Palaniswami had shared it with a vow to not rest till the ‘real culprit’ was caught –Gnanasekaran was arrested soon after the girl complained about the crime and the police had been maintaining that he was operating alone though the FIR on the case that was leaked had a mention of the ‘sir.’
Chezian recalled the police firing at Thoothukudi on people protesting against the Sterlite plant and killing 13 of them in 2018 and said that Palaniswami, the then Chief Minister, who came to know of the incident only through television news, had not reformed a bit and was calling for protests based on media reports.
The contention of Chezian and Social Welfare Minister Geetha Jeevan was that under the DMK rule women were coming forward to file police complaints unlike the earlier times when women were scared of approaching the police. The Ministers said that Palaniswami was frightening the women through his statements and agitations.
Jeevan said that Palaniswami, by seeking to play politics with a sensitive issue, had breached political ethics and lowered his dignity. She said that under the AIADMK women were afraid of approaching the police and even if they gathered the courage to do it no FIR would be filed but if they did it in the DMK regime it was because of the confidence they had in the government that could not be shaken by false charges.
Listing the various schemes of the government meant for the uplift of women like the Pudhumai Penn, free bus ride and monthly assistance, the Minister said. A group of young women in Tiruvannamalai also held a rally holding placards declaring that they were safe in the State and wanted not to impede women’s education.
Vijay, who wrote a letter to his ‘younger sisters’ in his own hand, said that he would stand by them and urged them to focus on their studies. Copies of the handwritten letter were distributed by his supporters to the public in some places including Chennai, where police swooped down on them and also the TVK general secretary Bussy Anand who was supervising the distribution. They were released later.
Annamalai thanked the women’s wing of the BJP for rising to the occasion. Apart from tying a black cloth around their mouths during their protest, the BJP women’s wing members also petitioned the NCW team that was in Chennai.
DMDK general secretary Premalatha Vijaykanth warned the government against living in an illusion that people’s protests could be quelled through police action and flayed the arrest of the AIADMK supporters who were agitating against the crime in Anna University.