The Tamil Nadu police on Wednesday arrested a CRPF personnel for vandalising the statue of Dravidian icon and social reformer EVR Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, in the state’s Pudukkottai district.
According to reports, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan, Senthil Kumar was in an inebriated state when he beheaded the black stone statue in Alangudi town. He is currently on vacation.
Even though, the Tamil Nadu police had registered a case against unidentified people immediately and launched a probe, the incident had caused a major furor in the area.
Police personnel were deployed in and around the area to avoid any tension while the authorities carried out repair work and restored the statue to its original state within hours.
However, that didn’t deterred political parties from exploiting the situation to score brownie points.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the beheading of the statue.
“When the RSS and BJP encouraged the tearing down of Lenin statues in Tripura, they signalled their cadres to destroy statues of those who opposed their ideology, like Periyar, the great social reformer who fought for the Dalits. His statue too was destroyed today in Tamil Nadu,” he said.
There has been a spate of statue vandalisation across the country in the wake of the tearing down of Communist leader Lenin’s statue in Tripura after the BJP stormed to power in the recently held assembly polls.
On March 6, two people were arrested for allegedly vandalising a Periyar statue at a municipal corporate office in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore.
The incident had occurred hours after BJP leader in the state, H Raja said that Periyar’s statues in Tamil Nadu should be razed just like Lenin.
Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah have condemned such incidents of statue vandalism across the country.