<p>While hundreds of complaints keep pouring in at the ‘Anti-land grabbing cells’ set up in each district police headquarters by the present Government to receive land-grab complaints under the previous DMK regime, several former DMK politicians and office bearers, including Veerapandi S Arumugam, former Agriculture minister are in jails.<br /><br />The arrests continued on Friday too, including a private assistant of former DMK minister Pongalur Palanichamy in Coimbatore. Some other senior DMK functionaries like its Tiruvarur district secretary, Poondi Kalaivanan, arrested on other charges, were detained under ‘Goondas Act’.<br /><br />The DMK’s lawyer, K S Radhakrishnan, who met the NHRC Chairman, Justice K S Balakrishnan in New Delhi on Friday and submitted a petition, told Deccan Herald over telephone that DMK sought the panel’s intervention as the party’s senior functionaries and former ministers were being singled out for arrests under the pretext of police taking action on land-grab charges.<br /><br />“These people (DMK leaders) are well known persons and long-standing functionaries. They will not run away, but still the police were arresting them at midnight or in the wee hours, in violation of various Supreme Court guidelines,” Radhakrishnan said.</p>
<p>While hundreds of complaints keep pouring in at the ‘Anti-land grabbing cells’ set up in each district police headquarters by the present Government to receive land-grab complaints under the previous DMK regime, several former DMK politicians and office bearers, including Veerapandi S Arumugam, former Agriculture minister are in jails.<br /><br />The arrests continued on Friday too, including a private assistant of former DMK minister Pongalur Palanichamy in Coimbatore. Some other senior DMK functionaries like its Tiruvarur district secretary, Poondi Kalaivanan, arrested on other charges, were detained under ‘Goondas Act’.<br /><br />The DMK’s lawyer, K S Radhakrishnan, who met the NHRC Chairman, Justice K S Balakrishnan in New Delhi on Friday and submitted a petition, told Deccan Herald over telephone that DMK sought the panel’s intervention as the party’s senior functionaries and former ministers were being singled out for arrests under the pretext of police taking action on land-grab charges.<br /><br />“These people (DMK leaders) are well known persons and long-standing functionaries. They will not run away, but still the police were arresting them at midnight or in the wee hours, in violation of various Supreme Court guidelines,” Radhakrishnan said.</p>
