YouTuber 'Savukku' Shankar.
Credit: X/@SavukkuOfficial
Chennai: Popular Tamil YouTuber ‘Savukku’ Shankar, a vociferous critic of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu, was on Saturday arrested by the Chennai Police in connection with a criminal case filed against him.
Though the police didn’t officially divulge the reason for his arrest, Shankar took to social media to allege that he was arrested for a Rs 94,000 UPI transaction to one of his employees on Friday night.
High drama was witnessed at the apartment where Shankar lives with his family on the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam radial road for about six hours on Saturday after the YouTuber-whistleblower refused to come of his flat and continued to give updates on his X handle and other platforms.
Shankar, a former government employee who was suspended from the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC), runs a popular YouTube channel, Savukku Media, and is known for his critical views of the DMK dispensation led by Chief Minister M K Stalin. Shankar was arrested at least twice in the past – once he was jailed in a contempt case and later for allegedly possessing ganja and for his derogatory remarks on women police.
Shankar resisted the arrest for hours by not letting the police team inside his flat till the time his lawyers came to the spot. As the standoff persisted, the police broke open the main door of the flat to gain entry at around 2 pm and arrested the YouTuber.
“This is the handiwork of the DMK government. This is a failure model government. They kept searching for my phone and they couldn’t find it. They want access to my phone,” Shankar told reporters while he was being taken into the police van.
In one of his videos, Shankar said he was being arrested because of a UPI transaction of Rs 94,000 received by one of his employees, Nithish, the previous night. “We don’t know who sent the money. By the time we were finding out who sent it, the police came to arrest me,” Shankar alleged.
Opposition parties, including the AIADMK, condemned Shankar’s arrest.