YouTuber and political observer Kishore K Swamy continues to languish in jail merely for tweeting some truths from the past about DMK leaders. After being unlawfully booked under Goondas his efforts to secure a bail also have gone in vain.
Kishore exposed the past history of DMK leaders CN Annadurai, M Karunanidhi and the current CM MK Stalin and Periyar aka EV Ramasamy through some tweets. He had shared parts of a questionnaire of Tamil poet Bharathidasan. At a point of time the poet had fallen out with CN Annadurai and he wrote about personal and scandalous things about the latter. Bharathidasan wrote that Annadurai took his niece to a wealthy man’s house to earn money.
Kishore had merely tweeted what Bharathidasan had said but DMK supporters took offence to it and started threatening and abusing the man. Perhaps to make an example out of Kishore, Ravichandran, DMK IT Wing secretary of Kanchipuram district lodged a complaint accusing the former of spreading rumours and provocation.
Kishore was booked under sections-153 (Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 505(1) (b) (Causing fear or alarm to the public, or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility) and 505(1)(c) (Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement or report containing rumour or alarming news with intent to create or promote, or which is likely to create or promote feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities) of Indian Penal Code’.
Kishore only shared what one Dravidian ideologue said about another which is a recorded fact. Yet he was arrested in the middle of the might for ‘wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot’. But those who issued death threats to him and warnings to other Brahmin handles in Twitter are scot free and continue to abuse the community and DMK critics even more.
While Kishore is incarcerated for a mere Twitter post, a DMK MP accused of murdering a labourer in his cashew factory was given bail in a matter of days. Sattai Duraimurugan, another YouTuber and Tamil nationalist who is said to have publicly abused CM MK Stalin in the matter of allowing the Kerala government to loot TN’s natural resources. He was also booked under the same sections as Kishore and arrested in the middle of the night on October 10. He managed to secure bail on November 26. But Kishore who was arrested in June has been languishing in jail till today.
Despite claiming to champion free speech, the DMK government has been locking up people in jail for exposing and criticising their past history and mistakes. Another YouTuber Dakshinamurthy aka Seethayin Mainthan was arrested for exposing EV Ramasamy’s scandalous history through his Youtube channel in October.
