The police on Tuesday arrested seven persons and remanded one of them for a WhatsApp video for objecting to the transport of a stone from Tiruvannamalai to Bengaluru for a Mahavishnu Vishwaroopam statue for the Kothandaramasamy temple. The objection raised on political grounds has been booked under causing religious enmity and obscenity among others.
In the 30-second video, the accused is seen venerating ‘God’ and stating that ‘God is important’, but only objecting to the transport of the stone to Karnataka, “which refused to share water with Tamil Nadu”. However, police had invoked sections including ‘unlawful assembly’ and even Section 67 of the IT Act, that deals with lascivious content or appeals to the prurient interests, which is applicable to obscenity, or pornographic content.
The accused Magesh Kumar and six others were arrested by the police. A judicial magistrate’s court also remanded Magesh Kumar under the aforementioned sections.
When The Hindu contacted Superintendent of Police Bandi Gangadhar on the use of the irrelevant sections for the video that was largely innocuous, he defended the use of the sections stating ‘legal experts’ were consulted.
The police had invoked Sections 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 153 (vilification of religion), and 505 (intent to incite violence) of the Indian Penal Code along with Section 67 of IT Act (whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or tends to deprave and corrupt persons shall be punished.)
