Chennai: Popular YouTuber and whistleblower Savukku Shankar was granted conditional bail by a lower court on Thursday in four cases booked against him in 2020 and 2021. Granting him relief, the Additional Metropolitan Magistrate Court directed that he should not comment on the cases and be present before the investigating officer every day for a fortnight. He is expected to be released on Friday upon completion of the necessary procedures.
Even though the Supreme Court had suspended his sentence in the contempt case on November 11, the police served the arrest intimation in the four cases in the Cuddalore Central Prison which kept him under incarceration. Of the four, three were registered in 2020 and the other in 2021. While one of the cases was booked for provoking breach of peace and promoting enmity, two others were under the Information Technology Act and one more under the Official Secrets Act for disclosing the itinerary of the Prime Minister's visit.
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Shankar was slapped with a six-month prison term in a contempt case after suo motu proceedings were initiated by Justice GR Swaminathan for the former's comments made in a YouTube interview that the judiciary was riddled with corruption and insinuating that the judge had met a person in connection with a case against pro-saffron YouTuber Maridass. Shankar refused to apologize and was lodged in Madurai Central Prison on September 15 and later shifted to Cuddalore.
Shankar was a lower division clerk in the Vigilance Directorate, where he got appointed under compassionate grounds following his father's death. He was arrested in 2008, when the DMK was in power in a sensational case relating to the leak of an audio tape involving a minister and the then DGP. Following his suspension, he turned into an activist and whistleblower. But, his incarceration has evoked support as many viewed the sentence as harsh.
