JOIN USAs protests against the arrest of PMK’s founder-leader, 73-year-old S Ramadoss intensified in Tamil Nadu, a youth from the OBC Vanniyar community who attempted suicide here on Sunday succumbed to his burns. This added to the growing chorus to release all the arrested PMK leaders.
The youth, a Jegan from a Keezhchettipattu village in Tiruvannamalai district, had been disheartened by the arrest of PMK’s youth wing leader and former Union Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, also Ramadoss Sr’s son, had doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire.
Anbumani’s wife Soumya, who visited the grieving relatives of the deceased at a government hospital in Chennai on Sunday, expressed shock at the incident, and appealed to the youths of the Vanniyar community not to emulate such acts.
Amid reports of more buses being damaged in sporadic acts of stone-throwing by miscreants in the northern districts, which are PMK strongholds, the party’s headquarters in Chennai on Sunday stoutly denied that anyone affiliated with the PMK was involved in these acts.
So far, over 350 state public transport buses, as well as some private buses, have been damaged in the protests. The PMK’s standoff with the state government was exacerbated when the Vanniyar-supported PMK accused Thol Thirumavalavan-founded Dalit outfit Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi of perpetrating various acts of violence and laying the blame for them on the PMK.
The PMK’s standoff with the State Government was exacerbated when the Vanniyar-supported PMK accused Thol Thirumavalavan-founded Dalit outfit Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi (VCK) of perpetrating various acts of violence and laying the blame for them on the PMK.
Meanwhile, for the fifth consecutive day, scores of houses in Vanniyar-dominated pockets in the districts of Dharmapuri, Cuddalore and Thiruvallur hoisted black flags atop their houses to protest againt the arrests of PMK leaders by the ruling AIADMK regime in the wake of some allegedly untoward incidents linked to the recent Vanniyar Youth Cultural Festival, organised by the PMK at Mamallapuram, 60 km from here.
Considering Ramadoss Sr’s age and that he is a diabetic, senior leaders from the Vanniyar community and functionaries from the federation of some 28 Vanniyar associations have urged the Tamil Nadu Government to release all the arrested PMK leaders immediately. If it is done, it is expected to ease the tension that, among other effects, has hit public transportation in parts of Tamil Nadu very badly.