Chennai: Smarting under the non-registration of its complaint over Wednesday's Molotov cocktail attack near the entrance of the sprawling Raj Bhavan campus in Chennai, the Governor's office appears to be escalating the confrontation with the DMK government by engaging in a blame game. Picking holes in the police remanding the accused, a history-sheeter, to judicial custody, a Raj Bhavan post on the social media platform X, said 'Fair investigation is killed before it began'.
The petrol bomb was hurled towards the main gate of the Raj Bhavan and it landed near the iron barricade on the busy Sardar Patel Road in Guindy. Security personnel at the gate quickly nabbed the accused, 'Karukka' Vinoth (42), who hurled it from the opposite side. “No one was injured and no damage to property in the incident,” Additional Police Commissioner (South) Prem Anand Sinha had said, soon after visiting the site. Later, Vinoth was produced before a magistrate and remanded in prison. The police are also questioning the family members of the accused to ascertain his antecedents as well as his acquaintances after he was enlarged on bail in an earlier case.
The police said interrogation of Vinoth revealed that in 2022 he had hurled a petrol bomb on the state BJP headquarters and was involved in a similar attack on the Teynampet police station and on a TASMAC (State-owned liquor agency) outlet in 2017. He had come out on bail only recently and carried out the attack in an inebriated condition, the police added. Furthermore, City Police Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore called on Governor Ravi at the Raj Bhavan earlier in the day.
However, Raj Bhavan has not taken to it kindly. The X post said, “Police did not register Raj Bhavan's complaint on the attack. Suo Moto diluted the attack as an act of simple vandalism and in a hurry got arrested accused remanded to jail at midnight waking up the magistrate and preventing detailed interrogation, which could expose those behind the attack. The fair investigation is killed before it began.”
In its complaint to the Commissioner of Police earlier on Wednesday, it termed the incident as 'a very drastic and serious attack ...against the Constitutional Head of the State of Tamil Nadu' and claimed that there was a group, which hurled two Molotov cocktails one after the other of which one had landed inside the gate. According to the complaint, this petrol bomb attack is a continuation of the previous attempts on Governor RN Ravi and the threats as well as verbal attacks from the leaders of the DMK and its allies.
Blaming the DMK government, it said “...for the last several months there have been sustained vicious attacks on the Hon'ble Governor using filthy abuses and wielding threats to his life. These verbal attacks and threats ...have been made mostly by leaders and workers of DMK and its allies in their public meetings and through social media. These threats are intended to overthrow the Hon'ble Governor and restrain him from discharging his constitutional duties. However, complaints lodged with the police have been inconsequential due to police inaction,” it read adding that even in the April 2018 incident near Dharmapuram Aadheenam, no FIR was registered and no action was taken. As such, today's 'brazen attack' was a consequence of it, it added. In the case of the Dharmapuram Aadheenam incident, the police and the administration have clarified that the black flag demonstration took place only after the Governor's convoy had left the place.
Quite interestingly, the present complaint filed by the Deputy Secretary to the Governor had demanded that a case under Section 124 of IPC (assaulting or overawing President/Governor with intent to compel or restrain any lawful power) be invoked. But, it might be recalled that in an earlier instance, the police had been pulled up by the Madras High Court for registering such a case against Nakkheeran editor RR Gopal and a few others and arresting him in October 2018 for a write-up about the then Governor Banwarilal Purohit. The issue pertained to one Nirmala Devi, an assistant professor, arrested for luring students into doing sexual favours for university officials in which the Governor's name was also dragged in. Gopal was released the same day by a magistrate court and later the case was quashed by the High Court.
Tamil Nadu Sports Minister and DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin had made it clear that the party was opposed to any form of violence and the perpetrator of the attack would be punished as per law. While the BJP had predictably come out in support of the Governor, terming the petrol bomb attack as yet another instance of the 'deteriorating law and order situation', the allies of the DMK have criticised the Raju Bhavan for being intolerant of free speech.
