ChennaiToday, all the opposition parties in the state have expressed their anger against the government by calling for a protest across the state on the charges of rape of a second year engineering student inside the main campus of Anna University in Guindy on December 23. It has tried to water down the case by leaking the first information report containing the personal details of the girl.
Even as Law Minister S Regupathi clarified that Jnanasekeran, accused of running a biryani stall on the footpath outside the university, was arrested within five hours of receiving the university’s complaint, leaders of the main opposition parties, AIADMK and BJP, hammered away. And by trying to organize protests and court arrests.
While AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palanswamy called for a protest in front of all Collector offices on Friday, the party’s organizing secretary D Jayakumar was barred from protesting in front of Anna University. where he led a group of 1000 party workers. BJP leader Tamilisai Soundarajan was arrested while trying to protest with his supporters in Valluvar Kottam.
BJP state president K Annamalai submitted evidence in the form of a Facebook post with photographs of Gnanasekaran and the deputy chief after alleging that the person arrested by the police had links to the DMK and was a student union official. Minister Udayanidhi Stalin and Health Minister M Subramaniam in the same frame, Regupathi told reporters at the secretariat, adding that the pictures were taken without the knowledge of the ministers.
The minister said that as claimed by the opposition parties, the government will take action against the culprits and there is nothing to hide in this incident. He refuted the opposition’s allegation that the state has become unsafe for women under the DMK rule and cited National Crime Records Bureau data saying that while the national rape percentage stood at 4.6, it was only 0.7 for Tamil Nadu.
Regupathi said that while the nation saw 1,65,000 crimes against women, as per the 2022 report, it was only 24 in Tamil Nadu and most BJP-ruled states saw very high rates of crimes against women. Denying that the identity of the rape victim was hidden by the police, he said that since the government is clear on its stand, the opposition party will not be successful in politicizing the incident.
Annamalai asked his party workers and workers to protest in front of his house saying that the police did not allow them to gather for the protest.
PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss said revealing the identity of the girl was against the code of conduct related to the incident. Palaniswami and Annamalai also said it was not appropriate to reveal the identity.