Eight persons including four school students have been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman, over the last several months in Tamil Nadu's Virudhunagar. The accused are understood to have threatened the victim of leaking an intimate video of hers and continued to rape her on multiple occasions. Among the accused are persons belonging to Tamil Nadu's ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and also school boys.
According to Police, an FIR was registered under sections pertaining to rape, voyeurism, Scheduled Caste & Scheduled tribe prevention of atrocities act. While the complaint was filed on Sunday, the arrests are said to have taken place on Monday night. The arrested persons have been identified as Hariharan, Junaith Ahmed, Praveen, Madasamy and four minor boys, all of whom hail from Virudhunagar. Both Hariharan and Junaith Ahmed are said to be DMK party workers.
Under the pretext of being in love with the victim, Hariharan is said to have filmed his intimate act with her and circulated it among his friends. Later, by threatening her using this video, the other accused had also started sexually assaulting the woman (who belongs to a downtrodden community), over the last seven months.
DMK MP and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin's sister Kanimozhi, had tweeted about the incident and expressed relief that arrests were made. She also added that the culprits deserved to be punished, irrespective of who they were.
However, the ruling DMK and Chief Minister MK Stalin has faced severe flak from opposition party BJP, over what they called the deteriorating policing under the DMK Government. AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan had questioned DMK MP Kanimozhi over why she concealed that the accused was a DMK functionary.
He also tweeted about another similar incident from Coimbatore, where another DMK functionary was arrested under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) for having sexually assaulted a 3-year-old girl. The hashtag "Save_GirlsfromDMK" has been a top trend in India in the afternoon hours of Tuesday.
