New Delhi: Tamil Nadu Police’s Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department will investigate allegations of the attack on YouTube commentator ‘Savukku’ Shankar’s house on March 24.
Shankar has a YouTube channel under the name ‘Savukku Media Network’
Greater Chennai Police Commissioner A. Arun, who Shankar has claimed orchestrated this attack, requested that the case be handed over to another investigative agency, Indian Express has reported.
Shankar has alleged that his house in Chennai was attacked by a group of 50 people who came dressed as sanitation workers at 9.30 am on March 24. The group allegedly entered his house shortly after he left it, ransacked it and dumped waste there, he wrote in a post on X, adding that the attackers took away his mother’s phone as she tried to call him.
“A group of 50 people, claiming to be sanitation workers, launched an attack on my house, where my mother and I reside. They broke down the door, entered the house, and smeared sewage and human waste across the bedrooms, kitchen, and various household items,” he said in the Tamil original, according to South First.
Shankar claimed that he called police but “only one sub-inspector and a constable arrived at the scene”.
“As of 11:43 am, the attackers are still there, and journalists who came to report on the incident are also being assaulted,” he wrote. He also posted footage from CCTV cameras, showing the attackers.
In her police complaint, Shankar’s mother Kamala said the attackers told her, “Now we have stopped with this. Next time, we will set fire to you inside the house.”
Shankar’s allegation of corruption in distributing sewer cleaning machines had angered sanitation workers according to some reports, notes South First. Shankar has since claimed that his allegations were not against sanitary workers.
He had also linked a senior Congress leader to corruption, recently.
Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai has condemned the attack, and said the DMK government has suppressed dissent. Congress leader Karti Chidambaram termed the attack “highly condemnable and gross.”
