Stalin

DMK leader and former deputy chief minister M.K.Stalin was briefly detained on Saturday at Tiruvarur in Tamil Nadu during a protest. His detention came on the day two other DMK leaders, including a former minister, were arrested on charges of seizing land, police said.

Tiruvarur is located near Thanjavur, the rice granary of the state around 325 km from here.

Stalin, on a tour of that region, was held when he and other party leaders protested the arrest of party functionary Poondi Kalaivannan in connection with a case.

According to police, a case was registered against Kalaivannan for allegedly preventing students from attending school Friday and also for being responsible for a bus accident the same day near Tiruvarur in which a student lost his life.

When police went to arrest Kalaivannan, the DMK men led by Stalin protested and were arrested.

Stalin was later set free.

Police registered a case against Mr Kalaivanan and went to arrest him while he was accompanying Mr Stalin for the party’s public meeting, leading to state-wide road roko by the DMK to condemn the arrest of Stalin.

The DMK, which has been accusing the ruling AIADMK of unleashing suppression against the Opposition, claimed the government released Mr Stalin bowing to the pressure exerted in the form of road roko by DMK workers.

DMK President and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said the Jayalalithaa Government’s action of “unleashing tyranny” by arresting DMK leaders and foisting cases were crossing the limits.

Talking to reporters here, he condemned the arrests of Mr Stalin for staging a road roko and former Minister Veerapandi Arumugham and DMK MLA J Anbazhagan in connection with alleged land grabbing complaints and described them as acts of vendetta.

The government was resorting to such arrests to wreck the DMK and thwart the party’s proposed agitation on August 1 to condemn the foisting of land grabbing cases on party leaders and arrests of DMK functionaries.