The Mamankam (Maha Makham) Festival is underway in Kerala and will conclude on 3 February 2026. It has been reported that with each passing day, the crowds have been increasing and is a perfect stepping stone to Hindu awakening in Kerala where Hindus are not the majority.

The numbers seem to have caused certain leftist portals a lot of heartburn and they came up with a shoddy narrative to show the Mamankam in a bad light.

On 31 January 2026, leftist rag The News Minute published yet another pathetic episode of “Let Me Explain”. It took nearly two weeks for The News Minute (TNM) to finally assemble an “explanatory” outrage video on 31 January, packaged as investigative journalism. That delay itself is telling: outrage was manufactured, in the most cringest sense.

What Pooja Prasanna’s Let Me Explain episode actually does is not “contextualise” history but force a predetermined ideological narrative onto a living cultural event, using absolutist claims, selective scholarship, and speculative motives.

As always, in this article, we dismantle down their lies one by one.

“Kumbh Has Nothing to Do With Mamankam”: A False Absolutism

TNM repeatedly insists that Kumbh and Mamankam/Mahamakham are fundamentally unrelated, “nothing to do with each other,” “not an oblation festival at all.” This is historically sloppy.

Yes, Mamankam was deeply political, centred on kingship, succession, and ritualised violence. But to claim it had nothing to do with ritual is simply false. Mamankam did involve:

• Ritual bathing in the Bharathapuzha
• Worship at Thirunavaya temples
• Cyclical gatherings every 12 years
• Large-scale fairs combining religion, politics, trade, and spectacle

Likewise, Kumbh has never been a purely spiritual bathing ritual. It has always combined kingship, political legitimacy, trade networks, monastic power, and mass congregation.

A fair statement would be: Mamankam and Kumbh are not identical, but they share structural similarities, and modern organisers are consciously drawing from the Kumbh template.

TNM instead chooses absolutist language to delegitimise the very idea of regional Hindu adaptation.

“It Had Nothing to Do With Hindu or Muslim”: Historical Erasure Disguised as Pluralism

One of the most misleading claims in the video is that Mamankam had “nothing to do with Hindu or Muslim.” TNM is just stripping the context.  Medieval Kerala was not a religion-neutral vacuum. Mamankam was anchored in:

• Hindu temples and Brahmin settlements
• Saivite and Vaishnavite ritual orders
• Sacred geography centred on Thirunavaya

At the same time, Muslim merchants and warriors played important roles, including ceremonial and military functions. That shows shared participation, not religious irrelevance.

TNM slides from a valid point (“Muslims were part of the structure”) to an absurd conclusion (“therefore it had nothing to do with Hindu or Muslim”). That leap exists only to delegitimise any contemporary Hindu framing.

The “Northern Imposition” Myth: When Adaptation Is Branded as Colonisation

The video claims that river aarti with multi-tiered lamps is “almost unheard of in Kerala” and therefore an “artificial northern imposition.”

This is historically illiterate. Kerala has long traditions of:

• Deepam and vilakku rituals
• Temple lamp festivals
• Deeparadhana
• Processional lighting tied to sacred geography

What is new is the scale and visual idiom, consciously inspired by Varanasi and Haridwar. That is adaptation, not imposition.

Calling it “artificial” denies local agency and assumes that Kerala’s Hindus are incapable of choosing pan-Indian symbols on their own terms. Ironically, this is cultural paternalism masquerading as resistance.

The South Has Mamankam Too

It is also misleading to suggest that large, twelve-year Hindu river gatherings are somehow alien to the South. Mamankam in Kerala and Mahamaham in Tamil Nadu can examples of this. Though they are not identical festivals, they can be compared to some extent. Both are major assemblies held once every twelve years on or around riverbanks, and this shared duodecennial cycle has led several scholars to group Kumbh, Mahamaham and Mamankam as part of a broader family of twelve-year Hindu commemorations. Where they differ is in their core logic.

Mamankam at Tirunavaya on the Bharathapuzha was a medieval politico-ritual assembly, where kingship, martial display, temple worship and trade converged, and authority for the next twelve years was symbolically contested on the nilapaduthara platform. Mahamaham at Kumbakonam, by contrast, is primarily a ritual bathing and merit-seeking festival, centred on the Mahamaham tank, where devotees believe multiple sacred rivers converge, with little or no political function. It occurs once every twelve years in the Tamil month of Masi (February–March) when the Magam (Magha) star is ascendant – the last in February 2016 and the next scheduled for February 2028.

The existence of Mahamaham alone punctures the claim that Kumbh-style or duodecennial river festivals are a purely North Indian phenomenon being “imposed” on the South.

“The Only Reason Is Hindu–Muslim Polarisation”: Speculation Presented as Fact

Perhaps the most revealing line in the video is the claim that the “only reason” for sacralising the Bharathapuzha is to create a Hindu–Muslim divide in Malappuram. This is just narrative setting – they want to put this seed of doubt in the viewer’s head. And they do it without evidence, just words. TNM projects motive and then treats it as settled truth.

The organisers themselves speak of cultural revival, reconnecting with civilisational roots, and pan-Hindu solidarity. This is what irks the left. One may disagree with that ideology, but disagreement is not proof of communal conspiracy. TNM collapses potential social effects into declared intent, a classic activist trick.

Environmental Alarmism With Selective Memory

TNM invokes pollution at North Indian Kumbhs to raise environmental alarms, while carefully avoiding comparisons with:

• Sand mining in Bharathapuzha
• Long-standing encroachments
• Construction along riverbanks
• Secular fairs and commercial exploitation

All done under the Communist & Congress regimes. But TNM will not open their mouths to question all that.

If “any intervention harms rivers,” then ritual gatherings are not uniquely culpable. TNM’s framing exists to reinforce a narrative: Hindu ritual = ecological threat, while secular or commercial damage fades into the background.

The False Binary: “Secular Heritage” vs “Hindu Spectacle”

The video romanticises 1990s “secular” Mamankam commemorations as neutral heritage while portraying the present festival as ideological distortion. They are just being dishonest.

Both are interpretive projects. Earlier festivals downplayed ritual, temples, and sacred meaning. The current one foregrounds them.

One is not inherently more “truthful” than the other. TNM simply treats its preferred framing as default reality and labels the rest as dangerous revisionism.

The Real Story: Panic Over Hindu Re-Assertion

Mahamakham did not erupt overnight. It unfolded peacefully from 18 January 2026, in public view. TNM’s outrage arrived late because it had to be assembled, not observed.

What truly unsettles TNM is not historical distortion, environmental harm, or communal tension, it is the sight of Hindus reclaiming their Dharma and spaces unapologetically, drawing from pan-Indian symbols without asking for elite approval.

Kerala’s history has always been layered – ritual, political, plural, and sacred at once. TNM’s problem is not with distortion, but with the wrong layer gaining confidence.

And that is why this “explain” video is a hurriedly put together last-minute ideological firefight.

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The post Why Kerala’s Mamankam Revival Terrifies The Left appeared first on The Commune.

On 1 February 2026, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2026-27, and once again, the “mocking brigade” was ready with their stale scripts. For years, a specific section of the political ecosystem has treated the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) as a ghost project – something to be ridiculed in drawing rooms and cynical tweets as a “waste of money” or a “perpetual delay”.

When the Finance Minister, as part of the proposals, had announced on another 7 High Speed Rail projects (including two connecting Chennai with Bangalore and Hyderabad), with a capital outlay of almost Rs.2.90L Crores, the visionless political opposition and their subservient media persons started their usual rant on “paper-train” theory.

In this article, I seek to explain why the critics have no feet to stand, with decades being spent in “feasibility study paralysis”, and how the current leadership is making sure that these “Growth Connectors” aren’t just lines on a map, but a blueprint for the new India.

The Cost of Lost Decades: 2004–2014

If the leaders who ruled India between 2004 and 2014 had even a fraction of the current government’s vision, Indians would already be traveling in Bullet Trains today. Instead, those ten years were defined by:

• Policy Paralysis: Infinite “pre-feasibility” reports that gathered dust in Rail Bhavan while the world raced ahead.
• Lack of Ambition: A mindset that believed India was “not ready” for world-class technology, preferring to keep the common man stuck in crumbling, slow-moving infrastructure. It was almost as if the ruling dispensation found perverse pleasure in the poverty porn that they were the sole creators.
• Inefficiency & Apathy: It took the current government to move from paper to pillars, signing the landmark deal with Japan in 2015.

It is a rich irony that the same ex-rulers, who were thrown out not just for historic corruption, but for their sheer inability to execute a single transformative project, are the ones mocking the “delay” today. Their mocking comes from a place of deep insecurity: they are baffled by a government that actually delivers.

The Global Context: India is Racing, Not Crawling

Building a Bullet Train is not like laying a highway; it is building a 500-kilometer precision instrument. When critics compare India to other nations, they conveniently hide the facts about “Democratic Friction”, inherent in a free nation. Despite being a vibrant democracy navigating intricate land laws, India is on track to complete its first HSR in roughly 12 years, outpacing the timelines of veteran players like France and Germany.

The only nations moving faster are autocracies where land is seized overnight and dissent is met with silence. Naming this specific neighbor often rattles India’s previous rulers, who had the audacity to sign a private MoU with the perpetual masters of that regime, a place where dictatorship is the law, and opposition can lead to instant disappearance. India has chosen the harder, more honorable path: building world-class infrastructure while respecting the rule of law.

Crushing the “Delay” Narrative: February 2026 Status

The “Bullet Train” is no longer a PowerPoint; it is a 508-km construction site humming with activity.

• 56% Physical Progress: As of February 2026, the project has crossed the halfway mark and entered its decisive phase.
• 100% Land Acquired: Despite years of sabotage by the previous state government in Maharashtra, the current administration has secured 100% of the land (1,396 hectares).
• Engineering Feats: In January 2026, engineers achieved a major breakthrough in the 1.5-km Mountain Tunnel-5 in Palghar, followed by the MT-6 breakthrough on February 3, 2026.
• Undersea Milestone: Work is in full swing on the 7-km undersea tunnel – a first for Indian infrastructure.

The “Growth Connector” Era

Budget 2026 has proven that Mumbai-Ahmedabad was just the laboratory. The future is a 4,000 km HSR network attracting ₹16 lakh crore in investment.

• Mumbai-Pune: Reducing a 3-hour crawl to a 48-minute dash.
• Delhi-Varanasi: Connecting the National Capital to the Spiritual Capital in just 3 hours 50 minutes.
• Chennai-Bengaluru: Shrinking the journey to a mere 1 hour 13 minutes.
• Chennai-Hyderabad through Amaravati and Tirupati: Three State Capitals. Four Cities. One speedy route to economic prosperity.

The savings in time, and a significant savings in cost compared to an air travel, implies that the distance shrinks and the city expands. One can work for a Bangalore company staying in Chennai. A comfortable return trip to Hyderabad from Chennai can be a daily affair. The fact that it connects another Capital city, and the spiritual destination in Tirupati implies a potential for much bigger and better infrastructural utilisation.

Conclusion

The mocking comes from those who couldn’t even electrify half of India’s rail tracks in 60 years. They are naturally baffled by a government that is building undersea tunnels and 350 km/h corridors.

India didn’t just need a train; it needed the WILL to build it. And this Government has it in abundance. In 2029, when the first Shinkansen-class train rolls out, it won’t just be carrying passengers; it will be carrying the pride of a Viksit Bharat that finally left the “efficiency-less” past behind.

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The post From “Paper Train” To 350 Km/Hr Reality: How India’s Bullet Train Vision Is Leaving Its Critics Behind appeared first on The Commune.

Tamil Nadu BJP Youth Wing State President Dr. SG Suryah has been repeatedly targeted by the DMK government and its political allies through police cases, arrests, and summons. Below is a documented record of the cases filed against him.

Case 1: Su Venkatesan Tweet Case (June 2023)

What happened: On June 7, 2023, Suryah posted a tweet addressing CPI(M) Madurai MP Su Venkatesan, accusing a CPI(M) ward councillor of forcing a sanitation worker to manually clean a drain filled with sewage, which allegedly led to the worker’s death. He called out Su Venkatesan for remaining silent over his party councillor’s alleged conduct.

Police action: The Madurai district cyber crime police arrested Suryah late on the night of 16 June 2023, in Chennai – acting on a complaint filed by CPI(M) Madurai district secretary Ganesan. He was arrested under multiple sections of the IT Act including provisions for promoting enmity between groups and intentional insult.

Remand and bail: He was produced before a Madurai court and remanded to judicial custody for 15 days till July 1. He was subsequently granted bail on June 20, 2023.

Case 2: Chidambaram Nataraja Temple Case (July 2023)

What happened: During the Aani Thirumanjanam festival at the ancient Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, an incident involving alleged harassment by local authorities was reported. Suryah posted about the events on social media. The Commune, a digital news portal of which Suryah is a director, also reported on the incident.

Police action: The Chidambaram Town police filed an FIR based on a complaint by a revenue department official – reportedly registered after the official overheard conversations at a bus stand about the posts. Suryah was summoned to appear before the investigating officer on 4 July 2023.

Court: The Madras High Court granted Suryah conditional anticipatory bail on 17 July 2023, directing him to appear before the investigating officer morning and evening daily till further orders. Justice G Chandrasekharan noted that the FIR appeared “intended to curtail journalistic freedom.”

The case against The Commune itself was quashed by the Madras High Court in April 2025.

Case 3: Three-Language Policy Signature Campaign/Mittai Case (March 2025)

What happened: On 7 March 2025, Suryah organised a signature campaign titled “Equal Education Is Our Right” in support of the three-language policy in Chennai. During the campaign, he reportedly distributed sweets (mittai) to school children who participated in signing the petition.

Police action: Suryah was arrested and booked under the Juvenile Justice Act 2015 along with Section 126(2) (intentionally preventing another person from moving in a direction) and Section 192 (intentionally provoking others to commit a riot) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita – for involving school children in the signature campaign. He was released later the same day.

Case 4: RTI Data Case – Salem (February 2026)

What happened: During a protest organised by the BJP Women’s Wing in Salem, Suryah cited data on governance failures – data he stated had been officially provided by the Tamil Nadu government itself in response to a Right to Information (RTI) Act application. The information was thus sourced from the government’s own transparency mechanism.

Police action: Despite the data being government-furnished RTI information, a fresh criminal case was registered against Suryah in connection with statements made at the protest.

Suryah’s response: Calling it “continuous repression,” Suryah alleged that police were under pressure from the state government to make another arrest in connection with the case. He described the situation as “authoritarian rule” and said cases had been filed against him for speaking in television debates, highlighting DMK governance failures, and criticising the ruling party on public platforms. He added that even when he had been physically attacked by DMK members, cases had been registered against him rather than his attackers, despite video evidence.

Case 5: Fabricated FIR – TV Debate Venue Attack Case (January 2026)

What happened: On 9 January 2026, Suryah and BJP Youth Wing members attended a television debate at the Daily Thanthi office complex on Poonamallee High Road, Chennai. After the debate, DMK cadres allegedly gathered outside and attacked BJP workers. Suryah alleged that police had to escort him to safety inside the premises. In the violence that followed, Thanthi TV security guards were reportedly beaten – one person’s head was broken, another’s hand fractured and bleeding. Police officers were also allegedly attacked by DMK members.

The twist: Instead of booking the attackers, the Tamil Nadu Police registered an FIR based on a complaint by a woman who claimed BJP workers, including Suryah referred to in the FIR as “Rowdy Surya”, abused, assaulted, slapped, kicked, threw stones at her, threatened to kill her, and attempted to outrage her modesty. The FIR also claimed BJP workers said: “We are the ones who make the rules in Chennai.”

Suryah’s response: Calling it “a completely fake FIR,” Suryah pointed out that the incident occurred in a media complex with CCTV cameras and multiple mobile recordings – all of which, he said, clearly showed DMK members attacking BJP workers, not the other way around. Three injured BJP workers had filed hospital complaints; those complaints were ignored, and their names were added as accused instead. 10 to 15 BJP Youth Wing members were identified via CCTV and named as accused, while no DMK attacker was booked.

DMK angle: Suryah alleged that a Dravidianist YouTuber named Senthilvel, whom he accused of being financially backed by the DMK, had triggered the violence. He alleged Senthilvel had created disturbances at a debate on January 8 as well, and had returned with DMK supporters the following day. He also alleged that channel editors were being pressured to include Senthilvel in debate panels. The BJP secured interim protection from the Madras High Court.

Case 6: Thirupparankundram Karthigai Deepam Case (December 2025)

Background: The Madras High Court’s Madurai Bench, Justice GR Swaminathan, granted permission for the ceremonial Karthigai Maha Deepam to be lit at the traditional lamppost on Thirupparankundram hill under CISF protection, in addition to the long-standing practice at the Uchipillayar Temple. The DMK state administration cancelled the hilltop arrangements on the morning of the event, defying the court order. When the 6 PM deadline passed and the lamp was lit only at the Uchipillayar Temple, not at the Deepathoon as ordered – Justice Swaminathan issued an extraordinary directive allowing the petitioner and ten others to proceed to the hilltop with CISF escort.

What happened: Following the court order, Hindu organisations and BJP members assembled demanding enforcement of the hilltop lighting. When protesters attempted to cross police barricades to climb the hill, clashes broke out. Two police personnel sustained injuries. District Collector Praveen Kumar imposed Section 144 prohibitory orders across the area.

Police action: Thirupparankundram police registered a case against 15 people including BJP state youth wing secretary SG Suryah and Hindu Munnani members under seven IPC sections including trespassing, disturbing public peace, and damaging public property.

Key irony: The protesters were demanding compliance with a High Court order the state administration had already defied. Justice Swaminathan subsequently slammed the DMK government for failing to comply.

A tweet citing a CPI(M) councillor’s misconduct. An RTI report based on government’s own data. Sweets given to school children. Attendance at a TV debate. A demand that a High Court order be enforced. These are not the actions of a man inviting legal trouble. These are the ordinary activities of a politician doing his job, and in Tamil Nadu, under the DMK, each one has become a criminal case.

Case after case under the DMK regime – The number itself is the story.

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The post Case After Case: How DMK Govt Turned BJP Leader SG Suryah Into A Legal Target appeared first on The Commune.

A few days ago, The Hindu Group’s Frontline magazine plastered its March 2026 cover with a grotesque anti-Brahmin caricature that recalls the darkest techniques of 20th-century racial propaganda.

Its editor Vaishna Roy has made her X handle private, we are not sure when, but it could well be after The Commune’s report went viral with several netizens sharing the article on social media.

In this report, we take a look at who Vaishna Roy is.

Vaishna Roy

Vaishna Roy is the Editor of Frontline, the fortnightly magazine published by The Hindu Group. She was appointed the editor in May 2022. Over the years, her editorial decisions and personal commentary have built a consistent, unmistakable pattern: sympathy for Islamist causes, casual contempt for certain Hindu communities, reflexive suspicion of Indian nationalism, and a readiness to find patriarchy and Hindutva in places most Indians would not think to look.

This is a record of what she said, what she published, and what it reveals.

October 2023: Defending Hamas After 7 October

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists spent over eight hours massacring Israeli civilians – killing 1,400 people, including women, children, and the elderly, taking hostages, and committing acts of sexual violence documented on video. The world watched in horror. Most civilised institutions condemned it without qualification. Frontline did not.

On 30 October 2023, Vaishna Roy published an Editor’s Note that did not condemn Hamas. Instead, she contextualised the massacre as the inevitable product of Israeli oppression. She wrote: “When one hears Israeli leaders repeatedly use the word ‘Nazi’ to describe their enemies, repeatedly accuse Palestinian supporters of being anti-Semitic, repeatedly claim that their powerhouse of a nation is the victim, one sees the deep psychological displacement at play.”

The sentence was a masterclass in inversion: the Jews, history’s most systematically persecuted people, were recast as psychologically disturbed for claiming victimhood. Anti-Semitism, a hatred that built gas chambers, was dismissed as a figment of Jewish imagination.

She went further, counting dead bodies across multiple Arab Israeli wars as if numerical asymmetry settled the question of who the aggressor is. Yom Kippur. The Lebanon War. The Intifadas. Gaza. In each case, she tallied more Arab dead than Israeli dead and let the arithmetic speak as her argument. What she omitted: that in every single conflict she cited, it was Arab and Palestinian forces who initiated hostilities. Israel’s higher kill ratio was a function of military competence and defensive preparation, not aggression.

Her conclusion was the most revealing sentence of all: “We are being harangued to condemn Hamas, but Hamas was not begotten in a vacuum.” Hamas, in Roy’s framing, was not a terrorist organisation that had just murdered 1,400 civilians. It was a grievance given form. A response. Understandable, if not justified.

The Israeli Ambassador to India had already written a scathing open letter to The Hindu for interviewing a senior Hamas official. Roy’s Editor’s Note was, in effect, The Hindu Group’s formal response to that letter. They stood their ground.

In the Editor’s note in October 2024, she compares the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis to the ‘genocide’ of Palestinians and says history repeats itself and it came a full circle in 80 years.

February 2024: Why the South “Infuriates” the Hindu Right

In February 2024, Roy authored an Editor’s Note titled “Why the South infuriates the Hindu Right”, framing the BJP’s struggle to expand electorally in South India not as a political or organisational challenge but as evidence of the South’s intellectual and moral superiority over the Hindi heartland.

The article traced the Jana Sangh’s early failures in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, arguing that the BJP’s periodic overtures toward Southern culture, softening on Hindi imposition, amplifying welfare were calculated “doublespeak” rather than genuine political evolution. The BJP, in her reading, was a northern, upper-caste Hindutva project that the South had correctly seen through. The argument was dressed in historical detail, but its editorial purpose was clear: validate Southern resistance to the BJP as enlightened and delegitimise the party’s national mandate.

May 2025: Operation Sindoor is Patriarchy

On 7 May 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor striking nine terror camps inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in direct retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre, in which Pakistan-backed terrorists had singled out Hindu male tourists, made them identify their religion, and shot them dead in front of their wives.

‘The Hindu’ की एडिटर Vaishna Roy को Operation Sindoor Patriarchal और oppressive लग रहा है

अब इन woke एडिटर को जवाब Colonel Sofia Qureshi को देना चाहिए या Wing Commander Vyomika Singh को?

छोड़िए, आज @sharmasimran_ और @himanshi__bisht ही जवाब दे रही हैं, वो दोनों पाकिस्तान की… pic.twitter.com/V9DwTYgkZO

— The Pamphlet (@Pamphlet_in) May 7, 2025

India named the operation Sindoor, the red vermillion that Hindu women place in the parting of their hair as a symbol of marriage. The name was chosen deliberately: a tribute to the widows of Pahalgaw. A promise kept.

Vaishna Roy’s response was posted within hours: “On principle, I object strongly to the label Operation Sindoor. It reeks of patriarchy, ownership of women, honour killings, chastity, sacralising the institution of marriage, and similar Hindutva obsessions.”

The same editor who refused to condemn Hamas for murdering women and children found it possible to condemn the Indian Army for choosing a word that Hindu women wear in their hair.

After Pahalgam: Blame India First

In what seems to be her post-Pahalgam commentary, Roy turned not to the Pakistani terror network that planned the attack, not to the handlers who gave the order, not to the gunmen who asked Hindu men their religion before shooting them, but to India’s governance of Kashmir.

Writing in Frontline, she described Kashmir as a Valley “squashed by the crushing foot of militarisation, censorship, and threatened demographic change.” She argued that India’s policy had created an “unhappiness that makes it easy for terrorists to strike” – a formulation that, read plainly, assigns partial causation for the Pahalgam massacre to the Indian state.

Vaishna Roy in Frontline.
1. Do nothing as insurgency and cross-border terrorism festers.
2. Once it reaches critical levels, use this criticality to again do nothing.
3. Continue till secession for Kashmir and civil war elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/OHjxfdiOis

— Suren (@zeneraalstuff) May 28, 2025

The argument follows a familiar editorial template: every act of Islamist terror in Kashmir must be traced back to Hindu India’s oppression as its root cause. The terrorists are instruments. The real culprit is the boot on the throat. Not once in the passage did Roy name Pakistan, name Lashkar-e-Taiba, name the ISI, or name the ideology that drove 26 men to their deaths on a mountain meadow.

She closed with: “In Kashmir, a lot can be achieved with empathy than with force.” – a sentiment that might sound reasonable in a seminar room, but rings hollow when the people being asked to show empathy are the widows of Pahalgam.

January 2026: “Forget GDP”

In January 2026, Roy shared a post promoting an article by economist Ashoka Mody in Frontline: “If you want the true Indian story, ignore GDP growth rates. Focus instead on the persistent inequality that has induced the rich to exit the Indian economy.”

I was just a kid in school, struggling to learn English, when I first picked up Frontline. Why? Because they had fancy English words, also they covered ISRO, space missions, and the cryogenic engine dream that fired up my imagination in a village with no electricity, no roads, no… pic.twitter.com/FO7cd8u7Vp

— Mihir Jha (@MihirkJha) January 10, 2026

The pushback was immediate. Across social media, ordinary Indians, many from states like Bihar that had spent decades at the bottom of every development index, pointed to what GDP growth had actually meant in their lives. Round-the-clock electricity in villages that had known only darkness. Pucca roads where there had been mud tracks. Tap water, toilets, bank accounts, free grain – tangible, life-altering changes that showed up in the numbers Roy was asking readers to dismiss. Bihar’s GDP growth was among the highest in the country, and that growth had not stayed in a spreadsheet. It had reached homes, lit up classrooms, and put food on tables that had known hunger for generations.

To be told by a media establishment to ignore GDP was, for millions of Indians, to be told to ignore the evidence of their own transformed lives. The inequality angle was legitimate, but dismissing the aggregate growth story entirely, at the precise moment it was lifting the most vulnerable, revealed more about the editorial worldview than about the Indian economy.

Here is another one from her archives – how like a typical leftist, she thought of India.

March 2026: The Brahmin Caricature Cover

Under Roy’s editorial watch, Frontline’s March 2026 cover featured a grotesque caricature of a Brahmin figure superimposed onto Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, complete with exaggerated cultural markers.

The imagery drew immediate and widespread criticism for its resemblance to early 20th-century racial propaganda – the same visual grammar used in Nazi Germany to dehumanise Jews: reduce a community to exaggerated physical and cultural stereotypes, frame them as hysterical or morally suspect, and present them as a monolithic adversary.

The irony was not lost on observers. This was the same editor who had invoked the spectre of the Holocaust to defend Palestinians in 2023.

History has seen this before. Anti-Jewish caricatures in Nazi Germany operated through precisely this grammar of distortion – not to argue policy, but to embed contempt in the public imagination.

The Tweets: An Obsession With Upper Caste

Roy’s X archive reveals a years-long preoccupation with upper-caste Hindus as a category of people to be held responsible for the choices of all Indians. A sample:

“Upper caste people can’t decide what others must eat.”

“They conveniently forget that white, male, hetero, upper caste etc lives have always mattered. They don’t need to fight to be seen.”

“Only a tiny percentage of upper caste Indians are veg. If govt represents all of India, it can’t choose to be veg.”

Is she suffering from “Caste diarrhea”?

Frontline Magazine’s editor @vaishnaroy is obsessed with upper caste.
Check her tweets.

Hindu group has been exposed now.#BoycottTheHinduGroup pic.twitter.com/Ra4wH6MvVE

— Satyajeet Mishra (@SatyajeetM72938) March 2, 2026

In isolation, any one of these tweets could be read as a point about pluralism. In aggregate, across years, they reveal a worldview in which upper-caste Hindus are a permanent category of suspect – a group whose customs, food habits, and cultural preferences are available for public condemnation in ways that no other community’s would be.

A Pattern That Cannot Be Coincidence

Taken together, across years and across subjects, they form something more coherent: a worldview in which Hindu symbols are always suspect, Hindu grievances are never quite legitimate, Islamic terror always has a root cause worth exploring, and India’s development story is a distraction from the real narrative.

What emerges from this record is not an occasional editorial bias but a consistent worldview. Under Vaishna Roy, Frontline appears to have drifted into a familiar ideological template: Islamist violence is contextualised, India’s national security responses are moralised against, economic progress is dismissed, and Hindu symbols and communities are treated with open suspicion.

This is not journalism that interrogates power. It is journalism that begins with a predetermined narrative and arranges facts around it.

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The post Meet Frontline’s Editor Vaishna Roy Who Defends Hamas, Finds Sindoor Patriarchal & Caricatures Brahmins appeared first on The Commune.

There are many ways to measure a community’s contribution to society. One of the most enduring is the institutions they leave behind – schools, colleges, hospitals, and charitable endowments that outlive their founders by generations and serve people far beyond their own community. In Tamil Nadu, Tamil Brahmins built many such institutions, often at great personal cost, and often for the benefit of communities very different from their own. And yet, the community gets blamed for ‘oppressing’ and ‘suppressing’ backward communities.

In this article, we will take a look at some of those contributions made by these silent builders from the Tamil Brahmin community.

PS Higher Secondary School, Mylapore (1905)

PS Higher Secondary School is a 119-year-old iconic institution in Mylapore, Chennai. The school was founded on January 13, 1905, owing its origin to the munificence of Brahmasri Pennathur Subramania Iyer (1830–1901), Attorney-at-Law and a farsighted philanthropist of Mylapore who had bequeathed his entire property in 1899 for the founding of PS Charities, with the object of providing national education that would inspire youth with high ideals of patriotism and reverence for ancient national culture.

In 1916, PS High School (North) was founded to serve the educational needs of underprivileged children. It functioned as a middle school till 1962 and as a high school, thereafter, operating as a government-aided school under the PS Educational Society. It celebrated its centenary in 2016 and was merged with PS Higher Secondary School in 2018.

In 2003, a primary school was established within the institution, and in 2007 it was renamed S.R. Kalyanaraman Memorial P.S. Nursery Primary School, honouring an institutional donor. By 2018–19, classes up to Standard VIII were introduced, and the school was formally redesignated as S.R. Kalyanaraman Memorial P.S. Matriculation School.

Lady Sivaswami Iyer Girls Higher Secondary School, Mylapore (1869)

One of the oldest and most prominent girls’ schools in South India, this institution began in 1869 as the Vizianagaram Maharajah’s Hindu Girls School, founded by Sri Gajapathi Raja Vijayarama III of Vizianagaram.

By 1904, it had become the Mylapore Girls School consolidated and strengthened through the financial support of noted lawyer and public figure V. Krishnaswami Aiyar, who helped stabilise its finances and infrastructure.

In 1946, the institution was formally renamed Lady Sivaswami Iyer Girls Higher Secondary School in memory of Sir P.S. Sivaswami Iyer and his wife, whose sustained contributions saved and nurtured the school across decades. On his death in 1946, Sir Sivaswami Iyer bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the institution – an act of extraordinary philanthropic generosity that secured its future.

Sister R.S. Subbalakshmi Iyer: A Life of Service (1886–1969)

Perhaps no single figure in Tamil Nadu’s educational history embodies selfless service more completely than Sister R.S. Subbalakshmi Iyer. Born in 1886 and widowed at the age of twelve, she went on to graduate with honours in B.A. and obtain the Licentiate of Teaching – achievements made possible by the remarkable support of her family. In her aunt Vaalambal, another child widow, she found a partner of towering strength.

In 1910, she established a Widows’ Home – an institution that transformed the lives of countless women who emerged from its portals as teachers, nurses, doctors, and school principals.

The home was unable to admit all who sought refuge due to funding constraints, which led Sister Subbalakshmi to found a series of schools catering to different and often marginalised sections of society:

Kuppam School, Madras (1920) – started for the children of fisherfolk living near the beach. Later renamed Lady Willingdon High School after the Governor’s wife, it moved to its current premises in 1922 and continues to function from there.

Sarada Vidyalaya, Mylapore (1927) – handed over to the Ramakrishna Mission in 1938, which later shifted it to Mambalam and subsequently to T. Nagar.

Sarada Cheri School, Cuddalore (1933) – for children of fishermen, potters, and toddy-tappers.

Sri Vidya Kalanilayam (1942) – for adult women seeking to complete their matriculation examination.

Mudurantakam School (1944) and Mangalamabikam School, Vaigalatour (1947) – for girls in rural villages.

Vidya Mandir School, Mylapore (1956) – her last creation, a co-educational school established under the Mylapore Ladies’ Club School Society.

The Government of India recognised her extraordinary life of service with the Padma Shri in 1958.

Vidya Mandir Matriculation School (1956–1960)

The MLC School Society (Mylapore Ladies’ Club) established a Kindergarten in February 1956. Its founding trio was Sister Subbalakshmi as President, Shri M. Subbaraya Aiyar, a leading lawyer of his time, as Secretary, and Mrs. Padmini Chari, educationist and organisational force, as Correspondent.

Vidya Mandir Matriculation School was formally opened in 1960. The MLC School Society was registered in 1957, with the club’s properties transferred to it.

Mrs. Chari was devoted to Vidya Mandir’s growth for decades, contributing considerable organisational skill in securing both financial and human resources. Shri Subbaraya Aiyar’s association with the school became a lifelong commitment.

M. Subbaraya Aiyar (1885–1963): The Quiet Architect of Three Institutions

M. Subbaraya Aiyar was a prominent income tax lawyer and philanthropist born in Marayur, Tanjore District.

After a distinguished legal career, he co-founded three major educational institutions that continue to shape Tamil Nadu:

• Vivekananda College
• Vidya Mandir
• Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chromepet

Vivekananda College (1948)

Vivekananda College was the product of the collective resolve of several public-spirited legal luminaries – Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, T.R. Venkatarama Sastri, Sir V.T. Krishnamachariar, Sir N. Gopalaswamy Iyengar, and M. Subbaraya Aiyar. Their founding vision was unambiguous: a college where admission would be open to all, based solely on merit, without any distinction of caste or community.

After several public meetings in August and September 1945, they decided to appeal for public donations and hand over management to the Ramakrishna Mission – already an established name in education and social service. The Mission readily agreed.

Madras Institute of Technology (1949)

With India’s independence came the urgent need to build a technological foundation for industrial advancement. It was at this juncture that Mr. C. Rajam Iyer, with characteristic pioneering spirit and patriotic fervour, made a munificent donation of Rs. 5 lakhs, raised through the sale of his own house, to found the Madras Institute of Technology in Chromepet in July 1949, with the blessings of the Sage of Kanchi, the Jagadguru Sankaracharya Swamigal.

In this endeavour, Rajam Iyer was supported by Subbaraya Aiyar, M.K. Ranganathan, L. Venkatakrishna Iyer, K. Srinivasan, and C.R. Srinivasan, along with generous public and industrial donations. MIT was established as an All India Technological Institution – one of the earliest in the country.

Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Memorial School, Kumbakonam

Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar donated a house property in Kumbakonam to the municipal authorities in 1941 for educational purposes. The Kumbakonam Municipality ran the Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Nursery and Primary School until it was closed in 1999–2000. After years of effort, the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, Chennai, secured temporary possession of the building from the Municipal Administration Department and reopened the school on Vijayadashami day in 2005.

Today, the school is a completely free English medium school – its children drawn from the poorest levels of society: fruit sellers, vegetable sellers, lorry loaders, and daily wage workers. The building’s ownership remains with the municipality; the Foundation runs it as a public service.

A Debt That Goes Unacknowledged  

The institutions documented above represent only a fraction of the educational legacy Tamil Brahmins built across Tamil Nadu. Schools for widows. Schools for fishing communities. Colleges open to all by explicit founding charter. Engineering institutions funded by the sale of personal property. These were not acts of charity to one’s own community. They were acts of nation-building and the founders did not ask what caste a child belonged to before opening their gates.

The Dravidianist movement cannot explain and has never tried to why its supposed oppressor class was simultaneously building free schools for fisherfolk, founding colleges open to all castes, and donating personal property for the education of widows and village girls. Tamil Nadu’s debt to these men and women is concrete and still standing, in every school that bears their names, in every engineer and doctor who passed through doors they opened. That debt has gone too long unacknowledged, buried under decades of political noise from those who benefited from it most.

Baskar is a finance professional having keen interest in current affairs and Indian culture.

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The post The Silent Builders: How Tamil Brahmins Shaped Education In Tamil Nadu appeared first on The Commune.

In Dravidian Model Tamil Nadu, the law and order situation is already alarming and continues to deteriorate with each passing day. Crimes against women and children of all ages in the society occur almost on a daily basis in this DMK regime Tamil Nadu. They promised social justice, that is why an infant and an octagenarian is able to face the same crime against them – yes, you read that right. Rape has become so common in Tamil Nadu that the horrific perpetrators do not spare even a child nor an elderly woman.

In this report, we look at the reported crimes against women and children across Tamil Nadu from 2021.

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that registered crimes against women in Tamil Nadu rose from 6,630 cases in 2020 to between about 8,500 and 9,200 cases annually after 2021, reaching 8,943 cases in 2023.

Instances from May 2021-Dec 2021

#1 May 2021: A 41‑year‑old karate instructor, Kebi Raj, was detained after a college student complained he sexually assaulted her seven years ago when she was his student; the incident occurred while she was returning from an event, when he allegedly touched her inappropriately. She further stated that he threatened to kill her if she revealed the incident to anyone; case registered under IPC 376 r/w 511 (attempt to rape), 354, 509 and Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act.

#2 June 2021: Chennai police arrested Anand, a teacher at Maharishi Vidya Mandir, for sexually harassing students. The case emerged after alumni shared experiences on social media, prompting others to come forward. The school suspended Anand on May 28 and formed an inquiry committee. An all-women police station registered a case the same day, but only recently received a written complaint from a victim, leading to his arrest. Anand was produced before a court and remanded in judicial custody.

#3 June 2021: A Chennai police sub-inspector, Satishkumar, was arrested under the POCSO Act for repeatedly sexually assaulting his friend’s 15-year-old daughter. The victim’s mother and grandmother were also arrested as accomplices. Satishkumar befriended the family through the mother, with whom he was having an affair. When the girl discovered them, he threatened her with his service weapon. With the mother’s consent, he began regularly assaulting the girl, buying her gifts and threatening her with a gun when she resisted. The victim finally confided in her father, who filed a complaint. Satishkumar, who had received a police commissioner’s award in 2019, was arrested and lodged in Ponneri jail.

#4 June 2021: A 38-year-old science teacher, Habeeb Mohammed, was arrested in Ramanathapuram for sexually harassing a Class 9 student at an aided school in Mudukulathur. The accused allegedly engaged in obscene phone conversations with the girl on June 18-19 and sent her inappropriate messages. Viral social media clips also revealed him naming and making lewd comments about several other girl students at the school. He reportedly tried to coerce the child into sexual activity in exchange for better marks. Following a complaint from the girl’s parents, police conducted an inquiry and arrested Mohammed under the POCSO Act and Juvenile Justice Act.

#5 July 2021: A 35-year-old construction labourer and mother of three was murdered in Kallakurichi while resisting a rape attempt. The woman was returning home from work on Saturday night, alighting at Deviyanandhal village bus stop. When she did not arrive, her husband began searching and found her unconscious on the roadside. She was declared dead at the hospital. Police arrested 40-year-old Arumugam from the same village, who confessed to the crime. He allegedly followed the woman from the bus stop in an inebriated state and attempted to rape her. When she screamed for help, he pushed her head into a puddle, causing her to lose consciousness and die.

#6 July 2021:  A Tamil professor, CJ Paul Chandramohan, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing five postgraduate students at Bishop Heber College. The complaint detailed inappropriate behavior, including vulgar jokes, unwanted physical contact, and forcing students to visit his private chamber. Following the allegations, the college suspended him and formed a committee to investigate. Police registered a case and took him into custody after a formal complaint.

#7 July 2021: A widowed single mother, Nithya, filed a complaint against DMK official Mani, alleging sexual harassment and threats after she couldn’t repay a chit fund loan due to COVID losses. Mani, her house owner, made lewd remarks and threatened her son. Despite multiple prior complaints against him for usurious lending, police allegedly ignored her case.

#8 August 2021: A Christian pastor in Tamil Nadu, Arumanai Stephen, was booked for allegedly gang-raping a married woman and filming the act. The 36-year-old victim claims Stephen and seven others spiked her drink, assaulted her while unconscious, confined her in a farmhouse, and repeatedly raped her. Stephen was already in custody for organizing a hate speech event where controversial Christian priest George Ponnaiah insulted Hindu deities and Bharat Mata. The victim’s initial April complaint allegedly saw no action due to the accused’s links to the ruling DMK. After Stephen’s arrest in the hate speech case, she filed another complaint. Police then booked Stephen, a DMK functionary, and others under various IPC sections.

#9 September 2021: A 36-year-old Christian pastor, Samuel, was arrested in Tirupur under the POCSO Act for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old minor girl who came to him to pray. The incident occurred in Veerapandi near Tirupur, where Samuel is based. After the assault, the girl’s relatives filed a complaint with the Tirupur South All Women Police. Police interrogated Samuel and subsequently arrested him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

#10 September 2021: Five men were arrested for gang-raping a 20-year-old mobile shop employee in Kanchipuram. The main accused befriended the victim and, along with another man, promised her a private company job. On September 8, he picked her up in a car and gave her a sedative-laced soft drink. After she lost consciousness, he called four friends who took turns raping her inside the vehicle. When the victim regained consciousness, she smashed the car window with her legs to escape. The commotion attracted passersby, causing all five accused to flee after dumping her on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway. Police arrested four suspects on September 9 and the fifth the following day. They were booked under IPC sections including gang rape.

#11 September 2021: A 20-year-old polytechnic student in Coimbatore was allegedly drugged and raped by her boyfriend, who also filmed the act. The victim met Vinoth Kumar (25) on Instagram in January. Their relationship developed, and in March, Kumar took her to a hotel where he laced her soft drink with sedatives. After she lost consciousness, he raped her and recorded the assault. Months later, Kumar showed her the video and threatened to make it public unless she married him without her parents’ consent. When she recently refused to live with him, he allegedly assaulted her and threatened to kill her. Neighbors rescued the injured student and admitted her to hospital. Police registered a case against Kumar and launched an investigation.

#12 October 2021: A woman, Monisha, filed a complaint alleging DMK functionaries Rajavelu, Venkatesan, and Selvam sexually harassed her and threw stones while she bathed and fed her baby. When her husband confronted them after they made lewd comments during voting, they allegedly attacked him with an iron rod. The accused reportedly claimed immunity as the ruling party.

#13 November 2021:  The correspondent of a private nursing college in Dindigul, P Jothimurugan, was booked under the POCSO Act after multiple girl students alleged sexual abuse. Three students came forward to file complaints; two were minors. On November 19, students protested at the Muthanampatti college, leading to its indefinite closure. The hostel warden, Archana, was arrested for allegedly facilitating the abuse by sending girls to Jothimurugan’s house. Jothimurugan surrendered in Thiruvannamalai and was lodged in Vellore Central Prison.

#14 November 2021: A 17-year-old student in Coimbatore died by suicide after allegedly enduring sexual harassment by her teacher, Mithun Chakraborty. In her suicide note, she named her abuser. The victim had dropped out of school to escape him, but the trauma persisted. Her father filed a complaint stating the family had previously informed the school administration, but principal Meera Jackson allegedly suppressed the matter to protect the institution’s reputation. Police registered a case against Chakraborty under the POCSO Act for sexual harassment and abetment of suicide; he was arrested and jailed. A case was also filed against Jackson, who fled to Bengaluru. She was arrested by a special team.

#15 November 2021: A 12th standard girl in Salem attempted suicide after enduring four years of sexual harassment by her school’s karate master, Raja. When she first complained at age 13, correspondent Stephen Devaraj allegedly silenced her. The victim, daughter of a government school headmaster, cut her wrists and tried to hang herself. After counseling, she revealed the abuse. Her relatives caught and thrashed Raja before handing him to police. Both Raja and Devaraj were arrested under the POCSO Act. The school, Gnana Deepam Matriculation Higher Secondary School, operates with foreign funding from a UK-based charity, Bethesda Project in Dorset, and runs alongside an orphanage.

#16 November 2021: Jesudas Raja, who ran Amala Children’s Nursery and School in Cuddalore district, was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually harassing three girls from a government children’s home who had joined his school months ago. Raja initially filed a police complaint claiming the girls were missing. When police located them, their inquiry revealed they had fled because Raja was sexually harassing them. Following this disclosure, police arrested Raja.

#17 December 2021: A 52-year-old government school teacher, Mathivanan, was arrested under the POCSO Act in Namakkal for allegedly sexually harassing a 10th-grade student. The victim and her parents filed a complaint with the District Principal Education Officer, stating that Mathivanan attempted to misbehave with the student at Namakkal Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School and demanded departmental and legal action.

#18 December 2021: A case was registered against Christopher Jebakumar (51), headmaster of CSI-run Samaria St. John’s High School in Tirunelveli, for sexually harassing girl students. He allegedly sent pornographic WhatsApp messages to Class 12 students attending special classes since September. Parents complained to the school administration, which took no action. Jebakumar allegedly tried to buy their silence by offering lakhs of rupees. He was suspended by CSI management only after police involvement, but remains absconding. Police registered a case under the POCSO Act.

#19 December 2021: An English professor, Tamizh Selvan, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing female students at St. Thomas College in Koyambedu by sending vulgar content and behaving indecently. When the management failed to act on student complaints, protests ensued. Only after prolonged agitation did the principal file a police complaint, leading to his arrest.

Instances from 2022

#20 January 2022: A 17-year-old nursing student in Panruti attempted suicide by jumping off a flyover after allegedly being sexually abused by three men, including the correspondent of JNF Nursing School, David Ashok Kumar. The accused reportedly recorded the assault and used the video to threaten and repeatedly abuse her. The victim, from Vizhuppuram district, is in critical condition at Cuddalore Government Hospital. Police arrested Ashok Kumar, two others, and a woman hostel warden under the POCSO Act. PMK chief Dr. Ramadoss shared the news on Twitter, expressing concern that the accused might escape justice despite their arrest.

#21 January 2023: A 54-year-old Christian pastor, Suri Stephen, was arrested for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl in Ooty after finding her alone during a prayer meeting at her home. Neighbors rescued the child after hearing her screams, and her mother filed a complaint. Police confirmed his involvement through investigation and remanded him in judicial custody under the POCSO Act until February 3rd.

#22 February 2022: A 19-year-old youth was arrested under the POCSO Act in Puducherry for threatening to leak intimate photos of a minor girl. The girl, who had studied with the accused in Chennai, had been in a relationship with him through social media after moving to Puducherry with her mother. When she recently stopped communicating with him, the youth allegedly threatened to post their intimate pictures online. The girl’s mother filed a complaint with Puducherry police, leading to the registration of a POCSO case. Police later arrested the youth.

#23 February 2022:  A 34-year-old English teacher, Manikam, was arrested for repeatedly raping a 17-year-old student at her home near Chennimalai after threatening to kill her. The abuse came to light when the girl fell ill and doctors discovered she was pregnant. The family filed a complaint following the revelation, leading to his arrest under the POCSO Act. He is a known DMK sympathizer with children of his own.

#24 March 2022: In March 2022, a hostel warden of a government-aided children’s home in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai was arrested after allegations that he had sexually abused children. Information received included the fact that seven children who had contacted ChildLine aged between the age of 14-16 alleged that they had been sexually assaulted by the warden. The warden was identified as 36-year-old A Duraipandian, a native of Thoothukudi district. A case under Sections 7, 8, 19 (1), and 21 (2) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act and Section 506 (1) IPC was registered. The owner of the home – Sagairaj was also arrested.

#25 March 2022: A woman was abducted and gang-raped by five men in a shared auto while returning home after watching a movie in Vellore. The victim and her male friend boarded the auto around 1 am, but the other five occupants overpowered them, took them to a secluded spot, and assaulted the woman at knifepoint. The gang also robbed them of mobile phones, Rs 40,000 cash, and gold jewellery. The woman filed an email complaint to the SP. Police arrested four people, two men and two juveniles, while search continued for the fifth accused. The men were in judicial custody; juveniles were sent to a borstal home.

#26 March 2022: A 46-year-old government school teacher in Tamil Nadu was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually misconducting with a 10-year-old student. The incident occurred just two days after he joined a new school near Annur on deputation. The girl complained to the headmaster, who alerted police. A child counsellor interviewed the victim, who confirmed the teacher’s inappropriate behavior. He was arrested and sent to prison.

#27 March 2022: In Virudhunagar, eight men including a local DMK youth wing ward organizer were arrested for gang-raping a 22-year-old woman after blackmailing her with a video. The main accused, Hariharan (27), had secretly filmed himself with the victim at his medical godown. He allegedly used the footage to sexually assault her and shared it with four minors and three others, Praveen (22), DMK youth organizer Junath Ahmed (27), and Modasami (37) who then gang-raped the woman. Following the victim’s complaint, police arrested all eight accused yesterday. They face dcharges including rape, criminal intimidation, and provisions of the POCSO Act.

#28 March 2022: A 17-year-old girl from Madurai died on March 6 after being found unconscious outside her home, two weeks after she went missing on February 14. Nagore Hanifa (29) allegedly lured her into a relationship, took her to Erode, and sexually assaulted her while posing as her husband. When relatives grew suspicious, Hanifa allegedly convinced her to attempt suicide. She consumed rat poison while he pretended to. As her condition worsened, his mother abandoned her at the victim’s home. Hanifa, his mother, and six others were arrested under the POCSO Act. Police denied gangrape allegations, citing no physical injuries.

#29 March 2022: A 47-year-old VCK ward councillor, Veerasamy, was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually assaulting a Class 2 girl in Tenkasi district. The accused allegedly lured the child with eatables as she returned from school, took her to an isolated spot, and assaulted her. He threatened to kill her parents if she disclosed the incident. When the girl complained of stomach ache, doctors examining her discovered she had been sexually abused. Her parents filed a complaint at Kuttralam police station. Veerasamy initially absconded but was later arrested near Tenkasi, where he confessed to the crime. He was charged under the POCSO Act.

#30 March 2022: A 50-year-old DMK functionary and building mason, Sivakumar, was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing his three-year-old neighbour in Chinnakarai. He lured the toddler into his home and assaulted her. The victim returned home crying and disclosed the abuse to her parents, who immediately filed a complaint. Police registered a case under the POCSO Act and took the accused into custody.

#31 March 2022: A 22-year-old Dalit woman was repeatedly raped for a year by eight men, including two DMK youth wing functionaries and four minor students, after being lured into a relationship and blackmailed with a video. All accused were arrested under the SC/ST Act. The DMK functionaries were remanded in custody, while the minors were sent to a juvenile home.

#32 March 2022: A 22-year-old woman was allegedly sexually abused inside a Pennadam mosque by a maulvi, Abdul Hani, who claimed to be an exorcist. He rendered her unconscious with incense before assaulting her. Her husband witnessed the act through a window and filed a complaint. Reports suggest the maulvi later bribed police and the family to settle the matter, leading to his release.

#33 April 2022: Four men were arrested for gang-raping a 22-year-old Scheduled Caste woman near Thanjavur on April 11. The victim was waiting at a bus stop when her former schoolmate, Kodiyarasan, offered her a lift. After she refused, he snatched her phone and forced her to accept. He took her to a cashew grove where he and three associates; Saminathan, Kannan, and Tamilarasan raped her, abused her using casteist slurs, and threatened her with dire consequences if she reported the crime. Police arrested the four accused, along with three others; Velusamy, Chelladurai, and another Tamilarasan for allegedly organizing a kangaroo court to help the accused evade punishment.

#34 June 2022: A government school chemistry teacher in Chennai was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually harassing female students. Sridhar Ramasamy (45), a teacher at Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School in Mukapere, allegedly obtained students’ numbers during COVID online classes. He reportedly sent malicious WhatsApp messages and pornographic images to 11th and 12th grade students. The harassment intensified after in-person classes resumed. Students, fearing academic repercussions, remained silent until exams concluded and results were released. They then complained to the Child Welfare Officer, leading to a case at Thirumangalam All Women Police Station. Police investigation confirmed the allegations, and Sridhar was arrested.

#35 July 2022: A 15-year-old girl in Tiruvannamalai died after overdosing on abortion pills prescribed by a quack to terminate her second pregnancy. The accused, S. Murugan (27), a driver and relative who used to drop her at school, had impregnated the Class X student. The girl had terminated her first pregnancy with pills a year ago. When she became pregnant again, Murugan and his friend C. Prabhu took her to a quack for pills. On the way back, she fell unconscious and was declared dead at Thanipadi hospital. Police arrested Murugan under the POCSO Act and Prabhu for his involvement. The quack is also being investigated.

#36 July 2022: A 15-year-old girl from Kovilpatti in Thoothukudi district was sexually assaulted by a co-worker at a matchbox factory where she worked on weekends. The accused, a worker at the same factory, allegedly raped the minor after promising to marry her. Following a complaint, the Kovilpatti All Women Police registered a case and arrested the accused, who was subsequently sent to judicial custody. The girl later became pregnant as a result of the assault. Her parents moved the Madurai High Court seeking permission to terminate the 24-week fetus. Justice G.R. Swaminathan, after consulting medical officials and the girl, ordered immediate abortion under the Medical Abortion Act.

#37 August 2022: A stalker and over a dozen accomplices armed with knives barged into a 23-year-old woman’s home in Mayiladuthurai that night and abducted her after she rejected his advances. The main accused, Vigneshwaran (32), a former Gulf worker, had previously been warned by police for stalking her. Police tracked the gang’s vehicle using CCTV footage and intercepted it at Vikravandi toll plaza within hours, rescuing the woman unharmed. Three accused, Vigneshwaran, Subash Chandra Bose, and Selvakumar, were arrested on the spot. Police were searching for the remaining suspects. The victim had earlier filed complaints about Vigneshwaran’s harassment.

#38 August 2022: A 52-year-old government schoolteacher in Tiruvannamalai was arrested for sexually assaulting a four-year-old UKG student at a private school, where his wife serves as correspondent. The accused allegedly lured the child with chocolates and molested her on the school campus. The girl later fell ill with severe stomach pain. Doctors at the hospital discovered she had been sexually assaulted, prompting her parents to file a complaint. Police arrested the teacher under the POCSO Act and remanded him in judicial custody until September 9. A school staff member was also arrested. The district collector ordered his suspension, and officials were questioning the correspondent.

#39 August 2022: A church pastor, John Robert, was arrested in Ramanathapuram for sexually abusing three minor girls aged 15, 16, and 17. The incident occurred on 7 August 2022, at St. Arulanandar Church in Mandapam, where the girls had come to pray. The victims’ parents filed a complaint with the Ramanathapuram Childline Office. Following an inquiry where the girls confirmed the abuse, police arrested Robert. A case was registered against him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

#40 September 2022: A physical education teacher at a government school in Nagapattinam was arrested under the POCSO Act for harassing and molesting students. B. Asokan (38), who also ran a private tuition centre, allegedly molested a Class 12 girl on September 19 near the centre. He then took medical leave and became unreachable. When the victim’s parents complained to the school headmaster, several other students came forward, alleging Asokan sent them sexually suggestive messages and touched them inappropriately. Officials from education, police, and social welfare departments conducted an inquiry. Police traced and arrested Asokan at his village and was produced before a magistrate and remanded to judicial custody.

#41 November 2022: A 16-year-old girl in Trichy was gang-raped multiple times by five men after being lured into a relationship by Ranganathan (33). In April, he took her to the Cauvery riverbank, gave her alcohol-spiked drinks, and rendered her unconscious. He then called four friends who assaulted her and filmed the act. They raped her three more times, threatening to release the video if she told anyone. When child activists stopped her wedding and placed her in a children’s home, the men released the video online. Police arrested all five under the POCSO Act.

#42 November 2022: A Sri Lankan priest, Sheraldu Manohar, and his wife were arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a minor girl at their Chennai church over six months. The victim’s grandmother filed a complaint, leading to an investigation that confirmed the abuse. Police revealed the priest had previously harassed other women and girls. Both were remanded in custody under the POCSO Act.

Instances from 2023

#43 January 2023: In January 2023, a Christian pastor was arrested under POCSO Act for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Tiruppur. This incident happened at a private hostel where several working women, school and college students stayed. The 15-year-old schoolgirl, residing in the pastor-managed hostel, chose not to return after the Christmas break. She disclosed to her parents that Father Andrews had raped her on December 14, 2022, and had threatened her to keep quiet about the incident. On that day, she skipped evening prayers, citing health issues, and stayed in her room. During his rounds, Pastor Andrews entered her room and sexually assaulted her. The pastor, along with his wife, operated the hostel for children and women and was introduced to the victim’s parents through their church. The victim and her brother were enrolled in the hostel, attending school from there.

#44 January 2023: A woman filed a complaint alleging a Christian pastor, Samuel, sexually exploited her for ten years under the false promise of marriage while secretly marrying another woman. He allegedly blackmailed her with intimate images, extorted ₹2 lakh, and threatened her with violence when confronted. His uncle also threatened her life. She attempted suicide earlier.

#45 January 2023: In a horrific incident on a January 2023 evening, a 19-year-old college student was gang-raped by five masked men at knife-point in front of her boyfriend near Kancheepuram. The couple, BBA and B Com students, had parked near a dark plot two km from the Outer Ring Road when five men – Manikandan (22), Vimal Kumar (25), Sivakumar (20), Vignesh (22) and Thennarasu (23) attacked them. Three restrained the boyfriend while two others threatened the woman with a knife before raping her nearby. Police arrested all five based on survivor information and CCTV footage. The accused were boozing nearby and called others upon spotting the couple.

#46 March 2023: The owner of Nambikkai Home for Tsunami orphans in Nagapattinam, Karibeeran Parameswaran, and his wife Choodamani were accused of sexually abusing minor inmates. Following a complaint from a former resident, authorities investigated and found the allegations true. All 30 children were moved to a government home, and the orphanage was sealed. Despite facing POCSO charges, Parameswaran, his wife, her brother, and two others secured anticipatory bail from Nagai court. The accused were government employees with alleged political connections, including a ruling party MLA.

#47 March 2023: Stanley Kumar, a preacher at a church in Magizhvannanaathapuram near Alankulam in Tenkasi district, was arrested by police for sexually abusing women. The members of the congregation have filed a complaint with the District Superintendent of Police saying that he misbehaved with women who attend the church. Based on the complaint, pastor Stanley Kumar was arrested by the Tenkasi Police.

#48 March 2023: In Madurai, a 50-year-old man, Lawrence, allegedly raped a 16-year-old student multiple times by promising financial aid and threatening her with explicit photos. He has since absconded. Police registered POCSO cases against both individuals, with a search underway for Lawrence following the victim’s parents’ complaint.

#49 June 2023: A Christian pastor, Vinod Joshua, was arrested for sexually abusing a girl since she was 14, continuing to harass her via WhatsApp even after her marriage at 18, while she is now eight months pregnant. The victim finally filed a complaint, prompting an investigation. The accused fled but was apprehended in Madurai and remanded in judicial custody under the POCSO Act.

#50 June 2023: A POCSO convict, Thirumurthy, assaulted a 45-year-old sewing teacher at Trichy Central Jail, kissing and injuring her after returning early to the classroom. When she tried to report the incident, authorities allegedly threatened and humiliated her, telling her to drop the matter. The traumatized teacher was forced to leave, exposing a cover-up and severe security failures within the prison system.

#51 October 2023: Four policemen in Trichy were arrested and suspended for allegedly sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl at Mukkombu tourist spot on October 5. The intoxicated officers, including a sub-inspector, confronted the victim and her 19-year-old boyfriend, assaulted him, then forcibly took her in a car under the guise of a drug inquiry. They raped her in the moving vehicle for nearly an hour before releasing her with threats if she reported the crime. The courageous victim filed a complaint, leading to POCSO Act charges against SI B. Sasikumar and three others.

#52 October 2023: A widowed daily-wage worker, Saroja, who sought help from DMK member Prabhu for her disabled son, was instead sexually harassed by him. He allegedly sent explicit videos, made inappropriate video calls, and threatened to harm her and her children if she resisted. Saroja filed a complaint at the Odanchathiram police station seeking protection from the accused.

#53 November 2023: A 50-year-old Special Sub-Inspector, Sahadevan, was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually abusing a minor girl in Dharmapuri. The abuse began three years ago when the victim was underage, under the false promise of marriage. She became pregnant and now has a 1.5-year-old child. When she turned 18 and demanded marriage, Sahadevan refused. The victim’s father filed a complaint with the SP. Sahadevan initially absconded but later surrendered. The accused had a prior criminal record, including involvement in stealing seized vehicles from the same police station where he worked.

#54 November 2023: A group of women advocates in Nilgiris has sent a legal notice to the IG demanding action against police who allegedly handcuffed a 15-year-old POCSO case victim while taking her to court on November 7. According to the advocates, the girl was made to walk from the bus stand to the Kotagiri magistrate court in handcuffs in full public view, causing her mental agony. The constable allegedly acted on IO’s instructions. When the mother complained to the SP, police allegedly threatened the family and forced the girl to sign a statement. The SP denied the allegations, claiming CCTV evidence proves no handcuffs were used.

#55 December 2023: A 63-year-old former DMK municipal councillor, Nagaraj, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl after luring her to his Coimbatore home. The victim, returning from school, was attacked on 11 December 2023. She disclosed the ordeal to her parents, who filed a complaint the next day at the All-Women Police Station, leading to his arrest under the POCSO Act.

Instances from 2024

#56 March 2024: A 9-year-old girl in Puducherry was abducted, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered by seven individuals, including Karunas (19) and Vivekanandan (54). According to an audio clip from the victim’s father, the ganja-intoxicated youths tied her hands and feet and mutilated her body. The case was under the POCSO Act, with both accused in custody and investigation underway.

#57 April 2024: A 57-year-old Seventh-day Adventist pastor, May Wald, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a 17-year-old Nepali girl in Hosur. Following the victim’s complaint to child protection officials, a formal case was registered at the Hosur All Women Police Station. Investigation confirmed the allegations, leading to his arrest under the POCSO Act.

#58 May 2024: On May 9, the body of an unidentified woman was found in Madharpakkam near Gummidipoondi with injuries. Post-mortem confirmed she was gang-raped and strangulated. CCTV footage showed her walking from a TASMAC outlet with three youths trailing her. Police arrested Surya, Suvendar, and Jebakumar, who allegedly confessed to the crime. All three were produced before a magistrate and remanded to judicial custody. The victim’s identity remains unknown.

#59 May 2024: Since 2022, Christian pastor M Raghurajkumar allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl 30-40 times at his Ranipet church, threatening her to keep quiet. The girl witnessed him harassing other children and women. Parents petitioned officials in February, and an FIR was registered on March 17 under POCSO Act. The pastor was later arrested.

#60 May 2024: Nine individuals, including three juveniles, were arrested in Udumalpet for gang-raping a 17-year-old orphan girl. The victim, living with her grandparents after her parents’ death, sought employment due to financial constraints. A 14-year-old boy promised her a job, then befriended and repeatedly sexually exploited her over a year, allowing eight others, including teenagers, to do the same. They also abused her 13-year-old friend, using alcohol and job promises to facilitate the crimes. The abuse came to light when the girl became four months pregnant.

#61 June 2024:  A 15-year-old girl was drugged and raped by two men, Somesh and the absconding Williams, at a birthday party in Saligramam after her acquaintance, film junior artist Pratisha Akira, allegedly spiked her drink with methamphetamine. The victim confided in her sister after experiencing stomach pain. Pratisha and Somesh were arrested under the POCSO Act and remanded to custody.

#62 July 2024: Victor James Raja (35), a PhD scholar and organic farmer from Thanjavur, was sentenced to life imprisonment under the POCSO Act for sexually assaulting children and sharing child pornography online. For two years, he exploited boys and girls aged 5-18, recording penetrative assaults and forcing children to perform sexual acts. Interpol’s child exploitation database contained his content. Identified through forensic analysis, he was arrested in March 2023. The CBI filed charges under POCSO and IT Acts. After examining 34 witnesses, Judge Sundarraj sentenced him to life imprisonment with a ₹6.54 lakh fine and recommended ₹4 lakh compensation each for three victims.

#63 July 2024: A 54-year-old Christian pastor, Devairakkam of CSI Christ Church in Kanchipuram, was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually harassing a 14-year-old girl. The minor, who resided on church grounds after her mother’s death, was assaulted on January 1. When she fled and reported the incident to community members, police allegedly failed to act immediately. Locals then approached the Chief Minister’s office, leading to intervention by the District Child Protection Office. After an investigation by officer Sakthi Kavya, a formal complaint was lodged. Police arrested Devairakkam following a thorough inquiry.

#64 August 2024: A 13-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by NTK functionary Sivaraman during a fake NCC camp at a private school in Krishnagiri. The three-day camp (August 5-9) hosted 41 students with no official NCC connection. On August 8, Sivaraman coerced the victim from her accommodation and assaulted her. He allegedly harassed 13 other girls as well. School management, including principal and teachers, knew of the offenses but suppressed information. Eleven people were arrested, but Sivaraman remained absconding under POCSO charges. NTK expelled him.

#65 August 2024: Dr. Suresh Kumar (27), who studied MBBS with a woman at a Puducherry college from 2015 to 2021, began harassing her after she married another doctor last year. He sent explicit images and threatening messages on social media, and threatened to sexually assault her by posting compromising pictures of the couple. The victim, now a doctor at a Chrompet hospital, reported the matter to Pallavaram crime branch police. Kumar was arrested, produced in Tambaram court, and sentenced to imprisonment.

#66 August 2024: On 12 August, a 22-year-old graduate returning to her hometown near Orathanadu for vacation was gang-raped by four men. While returning from shopping that evening, Kavithasan (25) forcibly took her to an isolated area with accomplices Diwakar (27), Praveen (20), and a 17-year-old minor. They raped her and recorded the assault on video. The victim filed a complaint that night at the Orathanadu all-women police station. All four were arrested.

#67 August 2024: A female engineer traveling on an express train from Kerala to Chennai Central was allegedly raped by two unidentified men. When the train neared Katpadi in Vellore, the men snatched her phone. As she chased them, they pushed her into a toilet and raped her before jumping off the train and fleeing. The woman filed a complaint at Chennai Central. Railway Police registered a case under six sections, formed a special team.

#68 September 2024: A woman in Trichy was gang-raped and blackmailed by six men, including a driver for Tamil Nadu’s education minister, Anbil Mahesh. The main accused, Silambarasan, pretended to love her, then forcibly took her in his vehicle with four to five others on April 13 and sexually assaulted her. They repeatedly called her, threatening to release a video if she refused them. He later gave her a tablet, offering money to end things. The survivor filed a complaint with the Trichy SP and spoke to media, seeking justice.

#69 September 2024: A 10-year-old girl in Chennai was repeatedly raped by neighbor Sathish, a water supplier. When her parents reported it, Anna Nagar All Women Police Inspector Raji allegedly detained and assaulted them at the station overnight, with the child witnessing the abuse. Despite an FIR filed August 31, Sathish remains unarrested. The abuse came to light August 29 when the girl was hospitalized. She didn’t receive mandatory counseling, and the inspector conducted an improper inquiry where the girl, fearing Sathish’s threats to kill her family, initially didn’t name him.

#70 September 2024: A 54-year-old headmistress, S. Grace Sagayarani, and her son Samson Daniel (31), a government doctor, were arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually assaulting children at a government-aided school in Trichy. Reports allege Sagayarani permitted her son to abuse students, sparking backlash against the DMK government.

#71 September 2024: A woman and her male friend were at a farm in Sivaganga when two men attacked them. The man was assaulted, and later three others joined and allegedly gang-raped the woman. The man initially filed only a mobile snatching complaint. During interrogation, police learned of the rape, and the woman filed a complaint on September 18. Medical examination confirmed sexual assault. Five men were arrested.

#72 September 2024: A government doctor, S. Samson Daniel, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting young girls aged five to ten during health checkups at a Trichy school hostel. His mother, the headmistress, was also detained for allegedly covering up the crimes. Following a childline report and interviews with 42 children, police registered a POCSO case.

#73 November 2024: In Valasaravakkam, Chennai, a mother has accused 27-year-old Prashanth, son of local figure “Pandal” Ravi, of repeatedly sexually harassing her minor daughter. Despite filing a complaint at the All Women Police Station on April 14, no action was taken. The family approached the court, which directed police to register an FIR under the POCSO Act. Though arrested, Prashanth was released on bail the next day. On New Year’s Day, he allegedly harassed the girl again, using inappropriate language and threatening to kill her and her mother if they pursued the case.

#74 November 2024: A former DMK union secretary, Anandan, is absconding after allegedly molesting several 6th and 7th grade girls, daughters of laborers working in his field. A child helpline complaint triggered an investigation by the District Child Welfare Board, which confirmed the harassment. Following parents’ complaints, a POCSO case was registered at the Jeeyapuram All-Women Police Station.

#75 November 2024: A 45-year-old private college lecturer, P. Sivaprakasam, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 25-year-old woman who sought his help securing a lab assistant job. He invited her to his home, where he attacked her. She locked herself in a bathroom, alerted a friend via WhatsApp, leading to police rescue. He was arrested and remanded to custody.

#76 November 2024: A physical education teacher, Ponsingh, was arrested for allegedly forcing five female students to consume alcohol and sexually harassing them during a sports competition trip. After parents protested over the school’s inaction, the principal and secretary were also arrested. The teacher was apprehended in Coimbatore, and an investigation is ongoing.

#77 On 4 December 2024, Gurumurthy, a 54-year-old lawyer, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a 25-year-old woman on a bus in the Puzhal area. Following the woman’s complaint, he was remanded in judicial custody.

#78 On 6 December 2024, the Egmore All Women’s Police Station has registered a case against a group of college students who allegedly sexually assaulted a 21-year-old mentally ill college student. Based on a complaint filed by the victim’s father, nine college students were arrested, including the victim’s friend, a woman, who had introduced the mentally unstable student to male acquaintances and a school-going boy.

#79 On 6 December 2024, the Ezhu Kinaru police have arrested two individuals, Barathwaj and Mohammed Abbas, for entering a women’s beauty parlour, which is locally run by the victim’s mother. The duo allegedly assaulted a 18-year-old women and issued death threats before fleeing the scene.

#80 On 9 December 2024, the Chennai city police apprehended a 22-year-old college student Venga Raghunath Reddy for distributing child sexual abuse (CSA) material on social media platforms. During his arrest, authorities discovered hundreds of CSA materials on his mobile phone. The accused was charged under sections of the POCSO Act and remanded in judicial custody. Additionally, the Goondas Act was invoked against him.

#81 On 10 December 2024, a college student, Vignesh, was arrested near Arumbakkam, Chennai, for attacking and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend after their breakup due to personal differences.

#82 On 11 December 2024, a woman in Thoraipakkam faced sexual harassment from a group of transgenders in public.

#83 On 12 December 2024, a history-sheeter, Saran Kumar from Otteri, was arrested for assaulting a woman.

#84 On 14 December 2024, an individual named Sri Ram was arrested by the Valasaravakkam police for attacking a fellow college student with a stone and attempting to force her into a romantic relationship.

#85 On 15 December 2024, Rajamangalam police have arrested two youths, Manukrishna, a software company employee, and G. Vishnu, a photographer from Triplicane, in connection with the alleged sexual harassment of a female food delivery executive.

#86 On 16 December 2024, a lorry driver arrested for attempting to sexually harass a woman in Thoraipakkam

#87 On 19 December 2024, a man from Aminijikarai was arrested for threatening his ex-girlfriend, demanding money, and threatening to release inappropriate footage of her.

#88 On 20 December 2024, a man was arrested in Royapuram for attacking his wife and father-in-law demanding dowry.

#89 On 22 December 2024, a man was arrested in Purasaiwakkam for abusing a 38-year-old woman.

#90 On 22 December 2024, a man was arrested in West Mambalam for sexually harassing a woman and attempting to steal her jewelry.

#91 On 23 December 2024, a second-year student at Anna University was sexually assaulted on campus. According to the FIR, accused Gnanasekaran approached the woman and her boyfriend, assaulted the man, and filmed the woman. He threatened to leak the footage to the dean and her parents unless she complied. He then forcibly took her to a secluded area behind the EEE building and sexually assaulted her between 7:45 PM and 8:20 PM. He photographed her ID card, extracted her father’s contact, and fled. Police arrested Gnanasekaran, 37, a roadside biryani vendor and DMK functionary with seven prior cases.

#92 On 26 December 2024, four intoxicated men harassed women bathing at Periya Kuppam beach, making lewd comments and physically attacking the family when they intervened. The victims included two women and a transgender woman. Following a complaint, police registered a case and arrested three of the accused—Dinesh, Manickavel, and Saravanan—while a fourth suspect remained at large.

#93 On 26 December 2024, a 52-year-old Special Sub- Inspector, Mohanraj, sexually assaulted a female police officer at the Rajapalayam South Police Station in Virudhunagar district. The accused arrived for duty in an intoxicated state and was directed to rest in an upstairs room. While there, he allegedly approached the woman officer and made inappropriate advances. When she tried to avoid him, he assaulted her. She raised an alarm, and colleagues rushed to rescue her. CCTV footage captured the incident. Medical tests confirmed he was under the influence of alcohol. Mohanraj was immediately transferred and suspended pending further investigation and departmental action.

#94 On 26 December 2024, Nirmala (28), a widow living with her two daughters, told her family she was going to deliver milk at the cooperative society in Chinnasalem and never returned. The next morning, a neighbor found her dupatta, phone, and chappals scattered in a nearby field. Investigation revealed she had been raped and murdered, her body discarded in a cornfield. Police arrested tea shop owner Kumaresan and another individual, Bell Mani, for questioning.

#95 On 26 December 2024, a 17-year-old Class 12 student was sexually assaulted in Kanyakumari district after returning from a volleyball tournament in Trichy. The girl had stayed back at school waiting for her father when a 37-year-old man, Faisal Khan, noticed her by the roadside. She asked to use the bathroom, and he directed her to a nearby house. After she came downstairs, he allegedly led her to another room, locked it, and assaulted her. The victim returned home in distress and filed a complaint. Police arrested Khan under the POCSO Act. The victim’s 21-year-old boyfriend allegedly took her to Khan’s house that night.

#96 On 27 December 2024, a mentally challenged woman sexually harassed in Chennai after being told she was being exorcised.

#97 On 27 December, a 47-year-old Christian pastor, T. Kenith Raj, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a 26-year-old woman after she sought his help for personal troubles. He claimed she was possessed by evil spirits and called her to his empty home under the guise of prayer, where he made sexual advances. When she resisted, he threatened her family. Police registered a case and arrested him.

#98 On 28 December 2024, a lone woman in home was abused and harassed.

#99 On 28 December 2024, a sanitation supervisor, Joseph Kumar, was arrested for allegedly assaulting an 11-year-old girl after luring her to a secluded spot in Vellore’s Anna Salai area. The crime came to light when the traumatized child confided in her parents, who filed a complaint. Police swiftly apprehended the accused, registered a case under the POCSO Act, and remanded him to Vellore Central Jail.

#100 On 29 December 2024, a 38-year-old woman was raped by four men in Ramanathapuram. The woman had visited her daughter, a college student, and was returning home in an auto rickshaw. When she asked the driver to stop near a railway track in Puthendhal around 8:30 pm so she could relieve herself, she was attacked by four young men who raped her. She reported the incident the next day. Police arrested Bhuvanesh Kumar, Saran Murugan, Selvakumar, and Muneeshkannan, all Puthendhal residents, on December 31. They were charged with rape and assault.

#101 On 30 December 2024, a church worker, Mahesh, was arrested for impregnating a 34-year-old divorced woman who sought his help seeking forgiveness for her sins. He promised marriage but exploited her repeatedly before abandoning her after she gave birth, refusing responsibility. Following her complaint, police arrested him and initiated an investigation into the case.

#102 On 30 December 2024, a 52-year-old Assistant Jailor, Balaguruswamy, of Madurai Central Jail was arrested for sexually harassing a 14-year-old girl who runs an idli shop with her father. The accused had befriended the girl’s grandfather, a former convict, and frequented their eatery. He obtained the minor’s phone number under the pretext of helping her pursue a police career and began sending lewd WhatsApp messages. When she blocked him, he started visiting the shop persistently. On December 21, he invited her to meet him in Karimedu. The girl’s relatives followed her, caught him speaking with her, and assaulted him with shoes. A video went viral. Police registered a POCSO case and arrested him.

#103 On 31 December 2024, an 80-year-old beggar woman was raped by an unidentified man near Hosur. The woman was standing near the Hosur bus stand when a 25-year-old man approached her. She said she needed to travel to Kelamangalam, and he offered to give her a ride on his motorcycle. Instead, he took her to the Perandapalli reserve forest and raped her before fleeing. Residents found her and alerted police, who took her to Krishnagiri Government Medical College and Hospital.

Instances from 2025

#104 January 2025: Three schoolgirls, aged 14 and 16, went missing in Chennai and were found being held on a library rooftop, where they were allegedly sexually harassed by a group including a college student and juveniles with extensive criminal records. Six individuals were arrested; three were sent to a reform school, three to prison.

#105 February 2025: On 15 February 2025, an intoxicated man, Sathya Balu, was arrested for allegedly attempting to sexually assault a woman police constable at Palavanthangal Railway Station. He tried to overpower her in a secluded area, but she raised an alarm, attracting passengers who caught him as he fled. He was handed over to railway police, and a case was registered.

#106 February 2025: A 26-year-old woman from Odisha arrived in Tiruppur with her husband and three-year-old child seeking work. On February 17, three Bihari workers—Mohammad Danish, Murshid, and Nadim—offered them shelter. That night, the accused held a knife to the husband’s throat, tied him up, and allegedly gang-raped the woman in front of their child, threatening to harm the toddler if she resisted. The next morning, they chased the family away. The survivor filed a complaint and is hospitalized. All three were arrested and charged under BNS sections.

#107 February 2025: A 13-year-old girl, initially reported missing in Chennai, was traced to Cuddalore with her 16-year-old boyfriend, who was arrested for rape. Investigation revealed she was earlier assaulted by traffic policeman Raman after he offered her shelter, attacking her in his vehicle and a police booth. Raman and the boyfriend’s mother were also arrested under the POCSO Act.

#108 February 2025: On February 24, 2025, a 17-year-old Class 8 dropout allegedly lured a three-year-old girl from an anganwadi center in Sirkazhi to an isolated area behind the facility. He sexually assaulted her, and when she resisted and tried to scream, he smashed her face with a stone, causing severe head and eye injuries. Staff found her after hearing cries. She was initially rushed to Sirkazhi General Hospital, then referred to JIPMER in Puducherry in critical condition. The accused was arrested under the POCSO Act.

#109 February 2025: A Christian priest, Reverend John Rose, was arrested for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl under the guise of religious guidance at his prayer hall in Kanyakumari. The crime emerged when the child was hospitalized with severe stomach pain, and doctors confirmed sexual assault. After fleeing to Coimbatore with his family, he was apprehended. His wife and son were also arrested as alleged accomplices under the POCSO Act.

#110 February 2025: A 13-year-old girl died by suicide after being allegedly stalked and harassed for three months by 25-year-old T. Saravanan, a TVK branch treasurer. He and his sister, Sangeetha, a party district secretary, confronted the minor publicly, pressuring her to marry him. Hours later, she took her own life. Saravanan was arrested under the POCSO Act, while his sister remains absconding.

#111 February 2025: Revathi (36), who was five months pregnant, was traveling alone from Tiruppur to Chittoor on the Coimbatore-Tirupati Intercity Express. When the ladies’ coach emptied at Jolarpettai around 10:15 am, Hemaraj (27) boarded and attempted to rape her. When she resisted, he threw her from the moving train. She sustained injuries to her head, hands, and legs and was hospitalized in Vellore. Police arrested Hemaraj, a habitual offender with prior cases of murder and robbery.

#112 February 2025: A 17-year-old girl from Coimbatore developed an online friendship with seven private college students through social media. The accused invited her to a room in Kuniyamuthur, where they allegedly gang-raped her. When she failed to return home, her grandmother filed a missing complaint at Ukkadam police station. Investigation revealed the assault, and all seven students were arrested under the POCSO Act.

#113 February 2025: In Pollachi, four minors and an 18-year-old youth allegedly sexually assaulted two schoolgirls and a schoolboy around five times over recent months. The suspects, who watched inappropriate content, allegedly forced the victims into these acts. Families from less privileged backgrounds hesitated to report until villagers contacted ChildLine. Police arrested three minors (sent to observation home) and the youth (judicial custody).

#114 February 2025: A 30-year-old woman from Vellore invested ₹15 lakh of her own and ₹1.75 crore through associates in chits run by Altaf Das near Cheyyar. When he refused to return money, she repeatedly demanded payment. He called her to a Vellore hostel, where she went with her mother. Five men threatened them, separated the mother, and allegedly drugged and gang-raped the woman. They recorded the assault and threatened to leak the video if she reported it. Police registered a case against six individuals.

#115 February 2025: A 21-year-old Muslim auto driver, Taufeeq Umar, was arrested for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 15-year-old schoolgirl he transported, promising marriage and forcing her to abort the resulting pregnancy with an accomplice. The abuse, spanning 18 months, came to light during a medical checkup. Ironically, his mother had previously protested his innocence, leading to a police transfer, before his POCSO arrest and remand.

#116 February 2025: Kumaresan (57), a lab assistant at a government school in Salem, was arrested under the POCSO Act for allegedly sexually harassing female students in the school lab. Students reported the incident to their class teacher, who informed the headmaster. District child protection officials visited the school, confirmed the allegations, and filed a complaint. Kumaresan was arrested and sent to Salem Central Jail.

#117 February 2025: A second-grade student at a Podhavur government primary school was sexually harassed by teacher Jayaraj Susainathan while cleaning the classroom. The girl’s parents filed a complaint, leading to his arrest. Investigations revealed that sexual harassment complaints had been lodged against this teacher for the past ten years, and he had been threatening victims and their parents. A POCSO case was registered, and he was sent to jail.

#118 February 2025: A 58-year-old assistant headmaster at a government high school in Pudukottai was arrested on February 17, 2025, under the POCSO Act for allegedly inappropriately touching multiple female students. A student contacted Childline helpline on February 10, triggering a week-long inquiry by the district child protection officer.

#119 February 2025: A government schoolteacher in Ramanathapuram died by suicide while under investigation for alleged sexual harassment of female students. Police, school education officials, and child welfare officers had launched an inquiry into the allegations when the teacher was found dead on February 18 morning. The body was sent for post-mortem examination. Officials stated the exact cause of death will be confirmed following the autopsy report.

#120 February 2025: A government school teacher, Suresh, was arrested under the POCSO Act in Ariyalur for sexually harassing a sixth-grade student. The Tamil teacher allegedly assaulted the girl and threatened to kill her if she disclosed the abuse. Fearing for her safety, the victim eventually informed her parents, who filed a complaint with the police. Authorities promptly arrested Suresh, registering a case against him under relevant sections for the protection of children.

#121 February 2025: An 18-year-old woman was abducted and sexually assaulted by an auto driver and two accomplices after she refused his ride at Kilambakkam bus terminus. She was threatened with a knife and assaulted in the moving vehicle. Her screams alerted residents, and a patrol team’s pursuit caused the suspects to flee. Police launched a manhunt.

#122 February 2025: Math teacher Sundara Vadivelu at a corporation school in Tiruppur allegedly sexually harassed multiple seventh-grade students over several months. The issue came to light on February 7 when parents lodged a complaint with the principal. Over ten children have come forward with complaints.

#123 February 2025: Ilayakannu (37), a temporary graduate teacher at a government higher secondary school in Yercaud, was arrested for sexually harassing 10th and 11th grade students. An 11th standard student complained to the principal that Ilayakannu had harassed her and four friends. District child protection officials confirmed the allegations. The Salem District Tribal Welfare Project Officer ordered his permanent dismissal. A POCSO case was registered, and police arrested him.

#124 February 2025: A temporary English teacher, S. Prabhu, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting six students at a government high school in Vaniyambadi. The abuse came to light when students contacted a child helpline, reporting inappropriate physical contact and lewd songs during a test. Following an inquiry by the District Child Protection Officer, a POCSO case was registered, and Prabhu was taken into custody.

#125 February 2025: Sivakumar (40), a temporary physical education teacher at a government model school in Kuppur, Salem district, was arrested for sexually harassing an 11th grade student. He allegedly made inappropriate comments about her appearance. The student reported the incident to the principal, who informed the District Child Protection Commission. After the commission confirmed the allegations, a complaint was filed at the Omalur All Women Police Station. A POCSO case was registered, and Sivakumar was arrested.

#126 February 2025: Three teachers at a Panchayat Union middle school near Bargur—Arumugam (48), Chinnaswamy (57), and Prakash (37)—were arrested under the POCSO Act for allegedly gang-raping an 8th grade student. The girl revealed to the headmistress that the assault resulted in pregnancy and an abortion. Child Welfare Committee officials investigated and filed a complaint. The teachers were suspended pending investigation.

#127 February 2025: A trustee of a private CBSE school near Manapparai and the husband of the principal allegedly sexually abused a 9-year-old student inside her classroom after sending the teacher outside on February 6, 2025. The victim’s grandmother lodged a complaint that night at the Manapparai All Women’s Police Station. Police arrested five individuals, including the trustee and senior staff members.

#128 February 2025: Sivakumar (48), a physical education teacher at a government school in Omalur, was booked under the POCSO Act for allegedly misbehaving with a plus-one student. On February 2, 2025, during a seminar at a polytechnic college, he allegedly acted inappropriately toward the student. The victim reported the incident to the school headmaster, who conducted an internal inquiry before filing a complaint with the Omalur All Women’s Police Station.

#129 April 2025: An 80-year-old woman died after being sexually assaulted by a drug addict, Nagaraj, who broke into her Chennai home. He attacked her, threatened her with death, and fled. Her son discovered her injured the next morning. Following her death, police arrested Nagaraj, who was identified as a local substance abuser, and remanded him to judicial custody.

#130 April 2025: A hostel warden and a Christian priest trainee were arrested for allegedly sexually harassing students at St. Xavier’s Britto Hostel in Trichy. Despite multiple complaints, no action was taken until students informed their parents. Following an inquiry by the District Child Protection Officer that confirmed the abuse, a POCSO case was registered against both accused at the Lalgudi All Women’s Police Station.

#131 April 2025: A 37-year-old Christian pastor, D. John Jebaraj, is absconding after allegedly sexually assaulting two minor girls, aged 14 and 17, at his Coimbatore residence during a party. The victims included an orphan adopted by his father-in-law and her neighbour. Following a complaint, police registered a POCSO case and formed a special team to track down the accused.

#132 April 2025: A 61-year-old tailor, Abdul Majeed Khan, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing two 10-year-old girls in a Madurai park after luring one there under the guise of playing. The assaults came to light when the victims returned home and informed their parents, who promptly filed a complaint. Police registered a case under the POCSO Act and took him into custody.

#133 May 2025: A 34-year-old volleyball coach, Mohammed Kalilur Rahman, was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor student over several months by falsely promising to train her for state-level competitions. Already married to two women, he allegedly exploited her trust with promises of marriage. The abuse was uncovered during a child welfare inquiry after he ironically complained to Childline about her parents. A POCSO case was registered.

#134 May 2025: A 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death at her home in Pulivalam by an armed intruder. A 16-year-old girl who tried to intervene was also seriously injured and hospitalized. Neighbors chased and caught the attacker, handing him over to police.

#135 June 2025: An 80-year-old woman, Kausalya, was allegedly raped by four intoxicated men near Panruti in Cuddalore district while walking along Pulavanur Road. The men dragged her into bushes, stuffed soil into her mouth to silence her, and stole her jewellery before fleeing. Hearing her screams, locals rushed her to Cuddalore Government Medical College Hospital. Police registered a case.

#136 June 2025: A 10th-grade girl in Chennai was hospitalized after a medication-induced abortion, revealing she was sexually abused by Leo, a distant relative she met on Snapchat. He allegedly gave her drugs and assaulted her multiple times, leading to pregnancy. Investigation uncovered an associate, Prasanth, also supplied drugs and abused her. Hundreds of explicit videos were found on her phone. Both men were arrested, and the girl was placed in a rehabilitation center.

#137 June 2025: In Ranipet on 3 June 2025, a 19-year-old electrician, Nandakumar, allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered an 80-year-old woman in Kathiyavadi village. He entered her residence intoxicated around 5:30 PM. The woman lived with her family on a brick kiln premises. Police reviewed CCTV footage and identified the accused through local inquiry. He was apprehended near a hillock on June 4 and arrested under BNS Sections 64(1) and 103(1) for rape and murder.

#138 June 2025: A pregnant woman, Madhumitha, who went to file a sexual harassment complaint against a bakery owner, was allegedly assaulted by police officer Raman at Kanakamma Chatram station. Instead of registering her case, the officer physically attacked her and a companion, forcing them out. The incident, captured on video, sparked outrage and demands for action against both the officer and the accused.

#139 June 2025: A 13-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a security guard, Mathew, at a government service home in Chennai. He attacked her early in the morning, covering her face and threatening her into silence. Her screams alerted others, and CCTV footage led to his arrest. The victim, new to the home, was hospitalized with injuries, sparking outrage over shelter safety.

#140 July 2025: On July 12, a 10-year-old girl walking to her grandmother’s house in Tiruvallur was kidnapped by a man who followed her near a mango farm. He beat, bit, and allegedly raped her. When the suspect was distracted by a phone call, the girl escaped, spotted another child approaching, and stopped her from entering the danger zone. She returned home and informed her grandmother, who filed a complaint at Arambakkam police station.

#141 July 2025: A 51-year-old science teacher at a government school near Ooty was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting at least 21 girl students from Classes 7, 8, and 10. The abuse came to light during a police awareness program when students submitted written complaints. Although students had informed the headmistress in June, she only issued a private warning. Following the revelations, police registered a POCSO case and remanded the accused.

#142 July 2025: An 8-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by Armed Police Sub-Inspector Raji in Nungambakkam after he reportedly administered an anesthetic injection. The child was found unconscious at his residence, and upon regaining consciousness, disclosed the abuse. The family faced initial resistance when filing a complaint, leading to protests. A POCSO case was registered, and the accused is under investigation while denying the allegations.

#143 July 2025: A 75-year-old Christian preacher, Aruldas, and a driver, Palani, were arrested for sexually abusing eight girls at an orphanage in Chengalpattu. The facility’s manager, Priya, was also held for covering up the abuse. Following a tip-off, child protection officials rescued all 34 children. The three accused were remanded to custody, with Aruldas hospitalized after complaining of chest pain during arrest.

#144 July 2025: A 16-year-old girl in Sengundram is four months pregnant after allegedly being sexually abused for years by her paternal uncle, Jamaludeen, who was her guardian. Despite the family filing a complaint on June 23rd, police initially failed to act, and the accused was reportedly released after being detained. Although the victim is now receiving hospital care, the family faces continued intimidation to drop the case, with no firm action taken against the perpetrator.

#145 July 2025: A Christian pastor, Regimon, was arrested for attempting to sexually assault a married woman at his Pentecostal church in Kanyakumari under the guise of healing her illness. He allegedly claimed her health issues stemmed from her husband and that sleeping with him would cure her. After he assaulted her during a private prayer session, she escaped and filed a complaint, leading to his arrest and judicial custody.

#146 August 2025: Three girl students at a government school in Kinathukadavu posted videos on social media alleging sexual harassment by their botany and music teachers, including inappropriate touching during dance practice and under the guise of encouragement. They claimed complaints to school authorities were ignored. Following public outrage, officials launched an inquiry and registered POCSO cases against the two teachers. All five staff members named were transferred to different schools as a precaution.

#147 August 2025: Abdul Hakeem, a TMMK state treasurer, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a woman employee at a fertilizer company in Villupuram. Police investigations revealed he sent inappropriate WhatsApp messages and is accused of harassing over ten women. Following a complaint, authorities registered a case and took him into custody.

#148 August 2025: A 55-year-old preacher, Varghese, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy during a Vacation Bible School in Kanyakumari after isolating him overnight. The victim returned home traumatized, but church officials pressured the family not to report it. Two months later, they filed a complaint, leading to his POCSO arrest. This follows a similar 2008 allegation that was allegedly suppressed.

#149 September 2025: An 11th standard girl from Pudupalayam, staying at her uncle’s house during school holidays, was grazing goats near a lake when two brothers, Ramajayam (33) and Pavankumar (31), who were also grazing goats nearby, allegedly gang-raped her. A 57-year-old man, Selvaraj, who witnessed the attack, allegedly threatened and sexually harassed her. The girl confided in her grandmother and aunt, leading to a complaint at Chengam All Women Police Station. All three were arrested under the POCSO Act and jailed.

#150 September 2025: On 30 September 2025, Sub-Inspector Suresh Raj and Constable Sundar of Tiruvannamalai East Police Station were arrested for sexually assaulting a woman from Andhra Pradesh. The officers stopped a fruit cargo vehicle carrying two sisters for inspection on Enthal Bypass Road. They separated the siblings, took them to a nearby grove, and allegedly assaulted one woman in her sister’s presence before threatening them and fleeing. The victim was hospitalized at Tiruvannamalai Government Medical College Hospital with police security.

#151 September 2025: A 52-year-old private college professor, S. Tamil, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a 17-year-old student. He called the first-year student to his room, offered to buy her a mobile phone, and then behaved inappropriately. Though she immediately reported the incident to faculty, the college took no action. After her parents filed a complaint, police registered a POCSO case and remanded him to custody, with further investigation pending.

#152 September 2025: A teacher, Shivakumar, was arrested under the POCSO Act after five students at a government-aided school near Kulithalai accused him of sexual harassment. The victims contacted the Child Helpline, prompting an inquiry by Child Welfare Committee officials, who confirmed the allegations. Based on their findings and a formal complaint, police arrested him and launched a further investigation.

#153 September 2025: A 52-year-old English teacher, Guru Vinayagam, was suspended after female students complained to the Tirunelveli District Collector alleging sexual harassment, including inappropriate language and behavior. An inquiry by the District Principal Education Officer confirmed the allegations, leading to his suspension. The teacher claimed the complaint was retaliation for questioning the headmistress about collecting money from students.

#154 September 2025: A karate trainer, Abdul Waqab, was arrested for allegedly sexually exploiting a 13-year-old student over four years and harassing other women in Tirunelveli. He gained her trust, manipulated her, and threatened her family when confronted. Investigation revealed at least eight victims, with some dying by suicide. He was booked under relevant laws after a complaint, with authorities seeking further cases.

#155 October 2025: A 15-year-old orphaned girl was trafficked by her mother’s friend and her niece, who lured her into prostitution with promises of money and gifts. They introduced her to multiple clients, including a supporting actor and a local DMK functionary, who sexually assaulted her at a lodge. Following a tip-off, police rescued the girl in August and have since arrested eight individuals, who were charged under the POCSO Act and remanded to custody.

#156 October 2025: A 38-year-old truck driver, Benjamin, was arrested for allegedly raping a 25-year-old IT employee at her hostel in Kazhakkoottam during an attempted theft. He entered her unlocked room after stealing from another hostel. Following a dramatic chase in Madurai, police apprehended him using CCTV footage. He was remanded to 14 days of judicial custody.

#157 November 2025: A 22-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times after she screamed for help when a mosque employee, Abdul Aziz, allegedly tried to sexually assault her inside the Narikudi Jumma Mosque. She had approached him seeking prayers for health issues. Passersby caught him and handed him over to police. The victim was hospitalized, and Aziz was arrested as tensions rise in the area.

#158 November 2025: DMK Villupuram Central District Union Secretary Thiruvakkarai Baskaran was absconding after a 35-year-old woman filed a complaint alleging he sexually assaulted her repeatedly over six months. The victim, married for 15 years and living alone, sought his help for construction materials. Baskaran allegedly videotaped the first assault and used it to blackmail and threaten her repeatedly, forcing compliance. A case was registered at Kottakuppam All Women Police Station.

#159 November 2025: A 43-year-old Christian priest, Panneerselvam, was booked under the POCSO Act for allegedly sexually harassing a 17-year-old girl during an extracurricular training session at Ottasai Matha Church. Though a woman teacher was assigned, the accused occasionally conducted classes. The victim informed her mother, leading to a joint complaint at Srivaikuntam police station, where a case was registered and an investigation initiated.

#160 November 2025: A 21-year-old Muslim man, Abdul Kaif, allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl in Krishnagiri, forcibly converted her to Islam, and married her through a nikah ceremony. Despite her father’s complaint, police initially sent the girl with the accused. She later revealed she was coerced into signing an Urdu register and consummating the marriage. Following outrage, a POCSO case was registered against Kaif.

#161 November 2025: On 2 November 2025, an MBA student was speaking with her friend inside a car near Coimbatore International Airport around 11 PM when a three-member gang on a stolen motorbike attacked them. They assaulted the man, forced him out, and kidnapped the woman. They took her to a secluded area behind a private college and gang-raped her, then abandoned her without clothes. The friend alerted police, who found her unconscious at 4 AM. She was hospitalized.

#162 December 2025: A 43-year-old idiyappam vendor, Fakir Mohammed, was arrested for allegedly luring three minor sisters aged 7, 10, and 12 into a house in Karur and sexually abusing them. The crime came to light when the eldest survivor confided in her parents, who filed a complaint. Police swiftly registered a POCSO case and remanded the accused to judicial custody.

#163 December 2025: A 27-year-old labour agent, Mohammed Mahbul Hussein, and two minor boys allegedly gangraped a migrant woman from Assam in front of her husband after they attempted to flee poor working conditions. The couple was intercepted near Palayamkottai, the husband beaten, and the woman assaulted in a forest area before being abandoned. All three were arrested following a police investigation.

Instances from 2026

#164 January 2026: A 35-year-old trainee doctor, Gopinath, was arrested under the POCSO Act for sexually harassing a 15-year-old girl at Thanjavur Medical College Hospital. The girl was staying at the facility to care for her younger brother, who was admitted for treatment. Gopinath was booked by the all-women police and subsequently lodged in Pudukottai prison. This incident is his second such offense, following a previous suspension in July 2025 for harassing a nurse, after which he was reinstated by a court order.

#165 January 2026: A canteen master, Gunasekar, was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a 22-year-old woman with mild intellectual disability at a government college in Chennai. Colleagues filed a complaint after he repeatedly exploited her on campus. During questioning, he suggested others may also be involved. Police conducted a detailed investigation to identify additional perpetrators.

#166 January 2026: A 24-year-old man, Ajith Kumar, allegedly broke into a 75-year-old woman’s home in Vellore while intoxicated, demanding money. When she refused, he assaulted and sexually abused her, leaving her unconscious. Neighbors found her the next day. After initially being discharged from the hospital, she disclosed the assault to her son. Police arrested Kumar, confirming he was under the influence of ganja.

#167 January 2026: A migrant worker’s body was found stuffed in a sack in Adyar, leading police to uncover a triple murder. The victim, Gaurav Kumar, his wife Munita, and their toddler were killed after Kumar confronted the accused over his wife’s sexual assault. Five suspects were arrested. The child’s body was recovered from a riverbank, while the search for the woman’s remains continues.

#168 February 2026: A 63-year-old private school administrator and retired teacher, Selva Soundar Pandian, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a Class 7 girl on the school premises in Tenkasi. Following a complaint by the victim’s parents, police registered a POCSO case and remanded him to custody. Relatives of the student protested at the police station, demanding strict action against the accused, who is a former MLA’s brother.

#169 February 2026: A two-and-a-half-year-old girl died after being sexually assaulted by her mother’s partner, Periyanayagam, a 40-year-old DMK Youth Wing secretary. The accused attacked the child while her mother was away from home. Initially presented as a seizure death, a post-mortem revealed internal injuries, leading to police action. Following the father’s complaint, Periyanayagam was arrested under the POCSO Act for assault resulting in death.

#170 February 2026:  A 56-year-old social science teacher, Raj Manohar, was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing seven Class 10 students at a government school near Kumbakonam. The students immediately reported the incident to the headmaster, who escalated the matter to district officials. Following a formal complaint by parents, police registered a POCSO case and remanded the accused to custody.

#171 March 2026: An unidentified man allegedly broke into a couple’s home near Uthangarai, fatally attacking a 71-year-old man and sexually assaulting his 61-year-old wife before fleeing. The woman raised an alarm after the intruder escaped upon hearing a passing vehicle. While the husband died in the hospital, his wife was treated and discharged. Relatives later protested, demanding the suspect’s immediate arrest, prompting police to form five special teams to investigate the case.

#172 March 2026: A police constable, Surya, allegedly entered a woman’s Royapettah home while intoxicated and in uniform, attempting to sexually harass her. The victim locked him inside, recorded a video, and alerted neighbors. He was taken into custody by his own station’s officers. Following her complaint, legal action was initiated.

#173 March 2026: A 56-year-old Rapido auto driver, Mohammed Azimuddin, was arrested for sexually harassing a 24-year-old woman passenger in Chennai. During the ride, he allegedly grabbed her hand and placed it on his shoulder after she touched his seat for balance. When she shouted, he stopped at a deserted spot, threatened her, and fled. Police traced him through Rapido and remanded him to custody.

#174 March 2026: Unidentified individuals allegedly broke into three consecutive homes in Chennai’s Kodungaiyur, sexually harassing the women inside before fleeing. The incident has sparked concern among local residents. Police have launched an investigation to identify and apprehend the suspects involved in the assaults.

#175 March 2026: A 14-year-old girl was gang-raped by two men in Madurantakam after being abandoned by her companions following a motorcycle accident. The trio was fleeing from the intoxicated suspects when they crashed, leaving the injured girl behind near Athivakkam lake. The men dragged her to a secluded spot and assaulted her before fleeing. Despite her injuries and trauma, the girl walked 12-16 kilometers through the night to reach Chengalpet Government Hospital, where she reported the crime at dawn. Police arrested suspect ‘Kakka’ Balaji, a known offender with prior cases, while four special teams search for his accomplice. The survivor is stable and receiving treatment.

#176 March 2026: A 24-year-old construction worker, R. Manikandan, allegedly lured a seven-year-old girl from near her home in Komarapalayam at night and sexually assaulted her. He abandoned her near a bridge, where passersby found her and alerted her family. Following the complaint, locals captured the suspect and assaulted him before his arrest. Police later assured protesting family members that strict legal action would be taken.

#177 March 2026: In a horrific incident in Thoothukudi district, a 17-year-old Class 12 student was allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered, with her body dismembered and discarded near Vilathikulam. The girl went missing earlier this week. Her remains were discovered by authorities on Wednesday, with body parts recovered and sent for post-mortem examination.

#178 March 2026: A college student from Tiruchirappalli, staying at an Adyar hostel for project work at CLRI, was allegedly abducted by a gang on February 14, 2026. They sedated her and sexually assaulted her. Days later, after hospital discharge, the same gang abducted and raped her again, threatening to kill her if she reported it. She confided in her boyfriend and filed a complaint at Abiramapuram All Women Police Station. Police have registered the case and were verifying facts before proceeding with arrests.

This is not an exhaustive list of the crimes committed against women under the DMK regime; these are only a part of the reported instances of crimes against women and children across the state. Several such cases may have gone unreported, and most do not reach the mainstream media as well.

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The post 178 Reported Crimes In 5 Years: How Tamil Nadu Has Become Unsafe For Women And Children Under DMK’s Dravidian Model Regime appeared first on The Commune.

On 5 March 2021, Maajja released “Dhee ft. Arivu – Enjoy Enjaami (Prod. Santhosh Narayanan)” – a Tamil indie track built on oppari folk music, gaana, and hip-hop, telling the story of Arivu’s grandmother Valliammal, a former indentured plantation labourer. The song crossed 500 million YouTube views, hit Times Square via a DJ Snake remix, and became the most successful Tamil indie release in history.

The song’s full title told you everything about the collaboration’s structure: Dhee was the primary vocalist and credited lead artist. Arivu was the rapper and lyricist, billed as a featured artist. Santhosh Narayanan composed and produced. This was documented, credited, and publicly available from release day.​

What followed over the next three years was how the Leftist-Dravidianist ecosystem transformed their politically aligned artist into a permanent, monetisable victim and how that victim can ride the sympathy wave indefinitely while producing nothing much of comparable independent merit.

Act I: Rolling Stone India – The Outrage Is Manufactured (August 2021)

Rolling Stone India published its August 2021 cover featuring Dhee (the lead artist of Enjoy Enjaami) and Shan Vincent de Paul (the lead artist of “Neeye Oli,” another Maajja track to which Arivu had contributed lyrics). Arivu was not on the cover. He appeared inside the feature.

Before anyone could read the article, Dravidianist hate-mongering filmmaker Pa Ranjith, and the most powerful patron Arivu had, fired the first shot on 22 August 2021: “@TherukuralArivu, the lyricist of #Neeyaoli and singer as well as lyricist of #enjoyenjami has once again been invisiblised. @RollingStoneIN and @joinmaajja is it so difficult to understand that the lyrics of both songs challenges this erasure of public acknowledgement?”

Note the framing. Not “why wasn’t Arivu on the cover?” but “he has once again been invisiblised” – as if to ‘imply’ a pattern of deliberate erasure. The “once again” was doing enormous work. There was no prior Rolling Stone erasure to point to. Ranjith was establishing a pattern that did not exist.

Within hours, filmmaker CS Amudhan escalated: “If the @TherukuralArivu erasure wasn’t a deliberate & blatant move, Dhee, @Music_Santhosh & @arrahman should speak up, otherwise it will go down as a historical injustice. These are people we believe are on the right side of the good fight, I really hope they do the right thing.”

This post did something calculated: it issued a public ultimatum to Arivu’s collaborators – either publicly side with Arivu or be complicit in a historical injustice. It weaponised their silence before they had even had a chance to respond. It also framed a magazine’s editorial call about a cover photograph as something that would “go down in history” if not corrected.

Radical woke singer Chinmayi Sripada also gave her two cents.

Filmmaker Leena Manimekalai chimed in.

The ecosystem was fully operational.​

There was one dissenting voice. Shan Vincent de Paul, whose cover appearance was being used as a prop in this outrage, came out and publicly criticised Pa Ranjith himself for “creating a rift between Tamil rappers” and fanning division rather than solidarity. He even released a response track addressing the manufactured conflict.

Regarding the cover : https://t.co/2QrRJGhPS3 pic.twitter.com/Zn0LZUQOIr

— SVDP (@shanvdp) August 26, 2021

His nuance was noted briefly and promptly buried. The narrative had momentum and nuance was not useful.

Under the pressure, Rolling Stone India issued a digital-only cover featuring Arivu.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Rolling Stone India (@rollingstonein)

The left media apparatus then filed its long-form analyses, all pre-framing any future controversy:

The Wire/LiveWire: “What Arivu’s ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ Tells Us About the Cultural Resistance to Caste” – published even before any controversy, pre-loading the interpretive lens​

Feminism in India: A full deconstruction framing the Tamil mainstream music industry as “Brahmanical and patriarchal”

Act II: Arivu Breaks Silence – And Claims Solo Authorship (July–August 2022)

For over a year, Arivu said nothing publicly. Then in July 2022, he posted on Instagram with a claim that went far beyond anything his collaborators had said: “I composed, wrote, sang and performed Enjoy Enjaami.”

Not co-wrote. Not collaborated on. Composed, wrote, sang and performed – framed as sole authorship of a song that had a credited music director and a credited lead vocalist from day one.

Santhosh Narayanan responded directly on 1 August 2022, confirming that the rights and revenues of Enjoy Enjaami were equally shared among all three artists, always had been, and that Arivu had received his share.

pic.twitter.com/7Rzhk6MXj2

— Santhosh Narayanan (@Music_Santhosh) August 1, 2022

Dhee issued her own statement: “I have always credited Arivu”.

Two of the three collaborators, on the record, contradicted the sole-authorship framing. The factual matter was settled. The ideological narrative was not, because the ecosystem had already filed its pieces, and the corrections were not amplified with anything close to the energy of the original outrage.

The Swaddle piece published after Santhosh’s clarification, still framed the controversy as Arivu “claiming his credit” and resisting “mainstream erasure,” making no meaningful acknowledgement that his collaborators had publicly contradicted his characterisation.

The News Minute also framed it as a caste issue. They made elaborate explainer videos like this one, got a Dalit activist to spew venom on ‘savarnas’ – the go-to punching bag for the Leftist-Dravidianist cabal.

The Targeting of Dhee and Santhosh For Their Brahmin Identity

The most revealing and ugliest dimension of the ecosystem’s campaign was what it did to Arivu’s collaborators. Dhee, whose voice is on every second of the song, was subjected to a sustained ideological assault on the basis of her caste identity. A widely circulated Newslaundry-amplified quote from multimedia artist Rajesh Rajamani framed her participation in the song as an act of cultural extraction: “While Dhee might be a talented singer, as a Brahmin artist she is forced to borrow from Bahujan cultural history (the oppari tradition in particular) through Arivu in order to create something that is both rooted and contemporary”.

The implication was precise: a Brahmin woman had no legitimate claim to the song she co-created, co-performed, and was billed as lead artist on, because of her birth. The Indian Express published an opinion piece calling the song’s own music video an example of “Dalit music, art, and verse being encroached upon by the savarna gaze” – characterising Dhee’s jewellery choices in the video as evidence of “dominant-caste bridal aesthetics” imposing themselves on subaltern art.

The News Minute went further, publishing a piece by the same Dalit activist they platformed on their YouTube channel, that directly questioned whether Dhee had any right to the song at all: “How is Dhee connected to it? Does she know what it is to be oppressed for generations? How can she call this her song? How can she perform this song in front of a global audience without Arivu?”.

Santhosh Narayanan was not spared either: Feminism in India framed the entire Tamil mainstream music industry he represents as “Brahmanical and patriarchal”, pre-positioning him as a structural oppressor before any dispute had even occurred. When both Santhosh and Dhee issued measured, factual clarifications in August 2022, confirming equal credit and equal revenue shares, the ecosystem did not amplify it. Their statements served no useful purpose to the narrative. They were noted and discarded.

This is the Left’s classic divisive ‘Oppressor-Oppressed’ narrative mechanism at its most naked: the Brahmin collaborators who had put equal creative labour into the song were retroactively recast as cultural appropriators and oppressors. Their caste identity was weaponised to delegitimise their own authorship of their own work. Arivu’s caste identity was simultaneously used to monopolise authorship of a collaboration. The logic ran in only one direction, and it had nothing to do with the music.

Act III: The Royalties Dispute – Real Grievance, Selectively Weaponised (March 2024)

On 5 March 2024, the song’s third anniversary, Santhosh Narayanan revealed that all three artists had received “a whopping zero cents” from Maajja despite over a billion cumulative streams and alleged the label had hijacked his YouTube channel: “To date, all three artists, we received a whopping zero cents from this song. Unfortunately, we tried our best to reach out to the label.”​

This was a legitimate, documented commercial grievance – equally shared by Santhosh, Dhee, and Arivu. The villain was the label. The victims were all three, together.

Maajja CEO Noel Kirithiraj responded with a now-infamous Instagram story calling the artists out for confusing “a legal agreement with a sugar daddy”. Santhosh called it sexual shaming. AR Rahman distanced from the label entirely. Maajja subsequently issued a formal counter-claim alleging there was “no consensus around contribution to the song among the artists involved” and that the artists had received advances.

The facts: a messy commercial dispute between three equal-share artists and a label with a toxic CEO.

The narrative that emerged in left commentary: a Dalit artist whose grandmother’s suffering powered a billion-stream song was being denied his dues by a corporate structure. Santhosh and Dhee’s identical grievance were background noise. Arivu’s became the story.

The Numbers That Nobody Talks About

Here is the question the left ecosystem has never asked: If Arivu is as singular a creative force as his supporters claim — capable of composing, writing, singing and performing a billion-stream song — why has nothing he has done independently come close?

The Spotify data answers it cleanly:​

• Arivu’s total Spotify streams: ~685 million

Of those:

• As lead artist (his own projects): ~32 million
• Solo (truly independent): ~782,000
• As featured artist (on someone else’s song): ~600 million

His independent/solo tracks — the ones where Arivu is purely in charge of his own creative output:

The pattern is there for all to see. Every song in Arivu’s catalogue with meaningful streams is a film song where a major composer – Anirudh Ravichander, Santhosh Narayanan, GV Prakash, brought him in as a featured vocalist/supporting vocal. His own independent albums and singles sit in the lower part of the table. His best-performing fully independent track has 8.1 million streams. Enjoy Enjaami, which he claims sole authorship of, has 51 million on Spotify alone.​

Vaathi Raid (Master), Powerhouse (Coolie), Single Pasanga, Hunter Vantaar (Vettaiyan) – these are all Anirudh Ravichander compositions for Vijay blockbusters. They are hits because Anirudh wrote them, because Vijay starred in the films, because multi-crore marketing budgets pushed them globally. Arivu’s verses are a component. The machinery is someone else’s.

Enjoy Enjaami is a masterpiece. It is also the product of Santhosh Narayanan’s production, Dhee’s vocal presence, and a music label’s international distribution network. Strip those elements out and Arivu’s independent output, by the numbers, is a collection of low-stream releases that have never broken through on their own.

The Grievance as Career Infrastructure

The most revealing quote Arivu has given came in a Reuters/Yahoo Finance profile in 2023: “I became angry and wrote a song, but did that bring me justice? No.”

He is describing Enjoy Enjaami – the song that brought him international recognition, a Times Square billboard, collaborations with Anirudh Ravichander, AR Rahman, and Rajinikanth’s Coolie, and a platform to speak to global media about caste and justice. And he is framing it as having brought him no justice.

In the same profile, he describes a college incident where he says former friends told him: “We gave you too much significance; we should have kept you in your place”. Whether this happened or not, it has become part of the standard Arivu biographical apparatus – the caste humiliation story that precedes every interview, every profile, every cultural analysis.​

The Swaddle quoted him in its piece maintaining that “every song of his has ‘the scarmark of this generational oppression'”.

Not some songs. Not the political ones. Every song. Every chord, every lyric, every release – permanently marked by caste suffering. When every creative act is framed as an act of resistance against generational oppression, the creative act itself stops being evaluated on its own terms. To say the independent albums are underperforming is to minimise the oppression. To ask why Arivu’s solo career hasn’t produced another Enjoy Enjaami is to be complicit in erasure.​

This is not accidental. It is a framework that immunises an artist from critical evaluation while keeping him perpetually in the news cycle. The Rolling Stone cover controversy (2021), the sole-authorship claim (2022), the royalties dispute (2024) – each episode, timed roughly 12–18 months apart, has reset the victim narrative and generated another round of left-media profiles, cultural analyses, and solidarity campaigns.

The Bottom Line

Enjoy Enjaami is real. The pain behind it is real. None of that is the argument.

The argument is this: a featured rapper on a collaborative single, produced by Santhosh Narayanan, fronted by Dhee, claimed sole authorship when it suited him, spent three years recycling the same grievances on the same anniversaries, and has not produced a single independent hit to justify the singular-genius narrative built around him. His collaborators contradicted him on record. The ecosystem ignored it.

Arivu had his agenda. The ecosystem also had an agenda and needed a mascot. They found one in each other.

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The post Enjoy Enjaami & The Politics Of Victimhood: How The Left-Dravidian Ecosystem Played The Caste Card With Arivu While Dismissing Santhosh Narayanan’s Side appeared first on The Commune.

In February 2022, the Tamil Nadu government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court. The message was unambiguous: the state would not permit the India-based Neutrino Observatory inside the Bodi Hills of Theni district. CM MK Stalin personally wrote to Prime Minister Modi asking the Centre to drop the project entirely.

The reason given? The Western Ghats were too precious to disturb.

On 17 January 2025, a man named K. Jagabar Ali left the Kattubhava mosque in Thirumayam taluk, Pudukkottai, after Friday afternoon prayers. He was on his motorcycle, heading home. A tipper lorry rammed into him. He died on the spot.

The police filed it as an accident.

It was not an accident.

Police later confirmed it was a premeditated murder, planned and executed by individuals associated with an illegal stone quarry. The same quarry Jagabar Ali had been exposing for months. The same quarry that was operating on permits that had expired on 13 November 2023. The same quarry against which he had filed complaint after complaint with Pudukkottai district administration, provided GPS-stamped evidence, and even obtained a High Court order for investigation, to which the administration responded by asking for “more time.”

In his last media interaction on 13 January 2025 – just four days before his death, Jagabar Ali stood outside the Pudukkottai collector’s office and told reporters that authorities had been protecting the quarry operators. He said he had no choice but to organise a public protest. Four days later, a lorry killed him.

The photographs in the image below, GPS-tagged sites across Meyyapuram, Kathvapallivasal, and Thulaiyanur in Pudukkottai, are the evidence he had collected. Published in the PUCL Bulletin. Documented at personal risk. Paid for with his life.

Tamilnadu + DMK protested the India-based Neutrino Observatory, fear-mongered it would damage the Western Ghats, despite strong support from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Yet today hills across the state are being torn apart by rampant illegal quarrying.

Illegal quarrying > Science pic.twitter.com/xMephr3mZi

— Saikiran Kannan | 赛基兰坎南 (@saikirankannan) March 11, 2026

This is what the DMK government’s relationship with Tamil Nadu’s ecology actually looks like – not in rhetoric, but in practice.

What the INO Actually Was

Let us be precise about what was killed in 2022, because the activists who opposed it were never precise about what it actually was.

The India-based Neutrino Observatory was a ₹1,500 crore underground science laboratory proposed inside the Bodi West Hills in Theni district – a cavern carved inside a mountain, approximately 2 km from the nearest village, with zero surface industrial footprint. Its purpose was to study neutrinos, which are subatomic particles that pass through the entire Earth without reacting with anything. No radiation. No emissions. No chemical discharge. No surface mining. Just physicists, instruments, and darkness inside a mountain.

The project had cleared multiple environmental reviews. It had the backing of TIFR and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Nobel laureates Arthur McDonald and Takaaki Kajita, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics for neutrino research, personally appealed to Tamil Nadu to allow it. Padma awardees, national science academies, and hundreds of researchers urged CM Stalin to support it.

And then there was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

India’s most beloved scientist-president wrote extensively in support of the INO. He gave the project team permission to use his statements publicly. He called INO a dream that would take India forward. He personally asked Tamil Nadu’s people and its government to embrace it and to “defeat the forces of ignorance” opposing it through rational thought.

The DMK said no anyway.

Vaiko, a DMK alliance partner, began a padayatra from Madurai to Cumbum against the project, flagged off by MK Stalin himself. Nobel laureates on one side. A padayatra on the other. The Tamil Nadu government chose the padayatra.

The Fear That Was Manufactured

What exactly did protesters claim the INO would do to the Western Ghats?

The arguments shifted constantly, as they always do when the goal is obstruction rather than engagement. Vibrations from controlled underground blasts would damage the ecosystem. The project was “near” a tiger corridor. The Western Ghats were too fragile for any human activity.

DMK’s own Supreme Court affidavit solemnly declared that the Bodi Hills “forms part of a significant tiger corridor” and that the Western Ghats is “a global biodiversity hotspot.”

Sacred language. Serious-sounding. Completely selective in application.

Because while Tamil Nadu was filing Supreme Court affidavits about biodiversity, the hills of Pudukkottai, the same district whose soil was “protected” from supervised energy extraction at Neduvasal, were being torn apart by illegal quarry operators. And the man who tried to stop them was run over by a lorry.

What the Quarry Mafia Did to Pudukkottai

Jagabar Ali was not a famous activist. He was a 58-year-old AIADMK functionary from Vengalur village in Thirumayam taluk – a man who ran a hollow block manufacturing unit and spent his spare time filing complaints. He had no political backing from the ruling party. He had no media handlers. He had a phone, a GPS camera, and the conviction that someone should document what was happening to his district’s hills.

What was happening was this: stone quarry operators in Thirumayam area were mining on expired licenses, extracting minerals far beyond permitted limits, causing massive revenue losses to the government. When Jagabar Ali provided evidence to the Tahsildar, officials leaked his information back to the quarry operators, who used 40 lorries overnight to dump extracted material back into the quarry to hide the evidence.

He complained to the district administration. He went to the High Court. He got an order. Nothing happened.

In his last press interaction, four days before his death, he said openly: “If we attempted to intervene, they would have nearly a hundred men with weapons, and we can’t do anything. We’re left with no choice but to meet officials, and if that doesn’t work, we have no other option but to gather people and protest.”

On 17 January 2025, the quarry mafia gave him their answer. A lorry. A roadside ditch. A staged accident scene.

Four persons were arrested, including a stone quarry owner. The CB-CID took over the case. The key conspirator, quarry owner S. Ramaiya of RR Sand Crushers, went missing. As of the last reports, he had not been found.

Jagabar Ali had exposed an ₹840 crore illegal mining scam in Pudukkottai. He was killed for it. His family lives in fear. The main accused is still missing.

This is Pudukkottai. The district the DMK protected from ONGC’s supervised engineers.

The Scale of the Statewide Destruction

Pudukkottai is not an exception. It is a window.

Across Tamil Nadu, 1,439 mineral quarries reportedly operated illegally between 2020 and November 2025 under DMK rule, according to the government’s own court admissions cited by PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss. In Tirunelveli, 53 out of 54 stone quarries inspected were found to be operating illegally. Four workers died when one of those quarries collapsed. Penalties of ₹262 crore were levied. Nobody went to jail.

On sand mining: the government permitted 7.51 lakh units. The Enforcement Directorate told the High Court that 27.70 lakh units were mined – nearly four times the sanctioned amount. Minerals are being smuggled across the border into Kerala. The Madras High Court warned of a CBI investigation into illegal mining on the slopes of the Western Ghats as recently as September 2024.

This is the Western Ghats the DMK was protecting from a neutrino observatory.

The Geometry of Selective Outrage

Hold these facts side by side:

Fact One: The INO proposed a sealed underground laboratory inside a mountain in Theni, with no surface mining, no emissions, no ecological footprint. Dr. Kalam supported it. Nobel laureates pleaded for it. The DMK killed it, citing Western Ghats ecology.

Fact Two: In Pudukkottai, the very district whose ecology was “protected” from supervised hydrocarbon extraction at Neduvasal, illegal quarries operated openly. A man who documented them was murdered. The main accused is missing. Officials who received his complaints leaked them to the operators.

Fact Three: Across Tamil Nadu, 1,439 illegal quarries functioned under DMK rule. Hills have been blasted open. Four times the permitted sand was mined. Workers have died. Activists have been killed. Nobody has gone to jail.

There is only one conclusion: the Western Ghats were never the concern. The ecology was never sacred. The tiger corridors were never the reason.

Supervised science was blocked. Unsupervised looting was permitted. And the man who tried to stop the looting was silenced with a tipper lorry.

What India Lost

The INO was India’s entry ticket into one of the most consequential fields of 21st century physics. Countries with neutrino observatories- Japan, the United States, Canada, Italy are at the cutting edge of research that feeds directly into nuclear energy science, medical technology, and national security applications. India had none of this. The INO would have been the foundation.

Dr. Kalam wrote that INO was a dream that would take India forward and asked Tamil Nadu to “defeat the forces of ignorance.”

The forces of ignorance won. And in Pudukkottai, they also killed the man who was fighting them with a camera and a complaint register.

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The post Welcome To Dravidian Model Tamil Nadu: We’ll Oppose A Neutrino Observatory But Will Allow Illegal Quarrying appeared first on The Commune.

When MK Stalin became Chief Minister in 2021, Tamil Nadu was told it was witnessing something historic. The Dravidian Model – a governance philosophy they claim to be built on social justice, welfare, and dignity for the underprivileged.

But in the same Tamil Nadu, in the same five years, hundreds of children eating their government-provided noon meal ended up in hospital. Lizards in the rice. Rotten eggs. Contaminated sambar. 29 incidents across the state. This is the unbranded side of the Dravidian Model – the part that doesn’t make it onto the hoardings.

Despite repeated occurrences, little seems to have been done to prevent these avoidable mishaps. Let us take a look at some of these reported instances.

Let us start with the year 2021.

#1 September 2021: 17 children were hospitalised in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district after reportedly falling ill following a meal at an anganwadi centre. The incident occurred in Poodhangati village, where children who consumed the mid-day meal began vomiting and some fainted. They were immediately taken to Cuddalore Government Hospital for treatment. Parents alleged that a dead lizard was found in the food, which may have caused the illness. Two children required intravenous fluids, while the others were said to be stable. Food safety officials have launched an inquiry into the incident.

#2 December 2021: School authorities at a Panchayat Union Primary School near Thogamalai discovered that eggs delivered for the midday meal were rotten (infested with worms). The incident was reported before the eggs were served, so no children fell ill. Nonetheless, the discovery of spoiled eggs triggered an inquiry by education and health officials.

Instances from 2022

#3 February 2022: On 25 February 2022, 25 students from the Athiya Nallur Panchayat Union Primary School in Puduchattaram, near Chidambaram, were admitted to the Chidambaram government hospital after fainting on the school. It was reported that the students were given rotten eggs.

#4 March 2022: Several students fainted after consuming the government mid-day meal at the Government High School in Sulakarai near Kallavi, located in the Uthangarai Assembly constituency of Krishnagiri district, Tamil Nadu. The incident occurred on 15 March 2022 after lunch was served under the state’s noon meal scheme to students from Classes VI to X. Shortly after eating, some students suddenly collapsed. School authorities immediately rushed the affected children to the Government Hospital in Kallavi, where they were admitted for treatment. Police and school officials began an investigation into the incident.

#5 April 2022: On 22 April 2022, 39 government school students who ate midday meal food provided by Kandiyur Govt Middle School near Valangaiman, Tiruvarur District, were admitted to Tiruvarur government hospital with complaints of vomiting, diarrhea, and fainting.

#6 May 2022: In Pudukottai District, three children suffered from vomiting and diarrhea at the Thondaiman Nagar Anganwadi. Food served to 50 children was later found to contain beetles and worms. All children were treated at Pudukottai Government Hospital.

#7 June 2022: On 24 June 2022, students at a government school near Ulundurpet in the Kallakurichi district experienced vomiting and fainting after consuming midday meal scheme food provided by the school. Over 30 students were admitted to the hospital.

#8 June 2022: On 25 June 2022, seven students at Karimangalatanur School vomited and fainted after eating the Midday Meal food. They were then treated in hospitals. Under the Barkur Union, 49 students attend Kuttur Panchayat Union Primary School, and 22 attend Karimangalatanur Panchayat Union Primary School.

#9 July 2022: On 21 July 2022, 27 students vomited and fainted after eating food served at a government school in Nagercoil. The incident happened in the Kavimani Desiya Vinayagam Pillai Girls Higher Secondary School located in Kotaru area of Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district, where more than 1300 schoolgirls are studying.

#10 July 2022: Around 60 girl students from Kasthuriba Gandhi Kaniya Gurukulam Girls Higher Secondary School in Vedaranyam, Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu, were hospitalised following a suspected food poisoning incident. The students reportedly fell ill after eating wheat upma and coconut chutney served for breakfast in the school hostel. Some students claimed they saw what looked like a lizard’s tail in the food, causing panic among others. Several students experienced nausea, dizziness, and vomiting, and were rushed to the Vedaranyam Government General Hospital. Doctors kept many under observation before discharging them after their condition stabilised.

#11 September 2022: In Tiruvannamalai district’s, Mothakal village, 47 students were hospitalized after eating contaminated midday meals that reportedly contained dead lizards.

#12 September 2022: On 10 September 2022, around 115 students at the government girls’ high school at Gandhi Nagar in Attur started vomiting and fainted allegedly after taking deworming tablets given by the health department.

#13 October 2022: In Tiruvannamalai district, at a school near Keezhpennathur, 15 students were hospitalized after a lizard’s head was reportedly found in the food consumed by a class 10 student. Over 150 students were enrolled in the school at the time.

Instances from 2023

#14 February 2023: In another concerning incident, several students fell ill after consuming eggs at Paramakudi Government Primary School in Ramanathapuram district, Tamil Nadu. On 3 February 2023, twelve children, eight boys and four girls, reported stomach pain, vomiting, and fainting after eating their lunch, which included eggs. They were quickly taken to Paramakudi Government Hospital, where doctors stated the illness was likely caused by undercooked eggs. Police questioned students and school staff as part of the inquiry.

#15 June 2023: More than 20 students fell ill after consuming the noon meal at a government school near Rasipuram in Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu, on 22 June 2023. Soon after eating the meal served under the state’s saththunavu (mid-day meal) scheme, several students complained of vomiting and dizziness. They were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. The incident triggered anger among parents, who later gathered at the school and protested, alleging that they had not been informed immediately about their children’s condition. Authorities treated the case as a suspected food-related illness, though the exact cause or contaminant responsible was not officially confirmed.

#16 July 2023: Sixty-nine students from Panchayat Union High School in Thandarai village, Tiruvannamalai district, fell ill on 15 July 2023 after consuming lunch prepared at the school during celebrations marking the 120th birth anniversary of former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj. According to reports, some students claimed to have spotted what appeared to be a lizard in the food, raising concerns about contamination. Soon after eating, several students experienced vomiting and dizziness and were taken to the Government Medical College Hospital in Tiruvannamalai. Doctors later discharged 67 students after observation, while two students remained under monitoring due to continued symptoms. Authorities said an incident report would be filed.

Instances from 2024.

#17 February 2024: As many as 102 students fell ill after consuming the mid-day meal at a government high school in Sakkangudi village near Chidambaram in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu. The incident occurred around 12:30 pm when students began experiencing vomiting and dizziness while eating lunch. A Class 10 student reportedly noticed a lizard-like reptile in the food, which caused panic among others who had already eaten. School authorities alerted emergency services, and multiple 108 ambulances rushed students to hospitals in Chidambaram, Bhuvanagiri and the Cuddalore Government Medical College Hospital.

Instances from 2025

#18 March 2025: Thirty-nine students from a Panchayat Union Middle School in Thennavarayanallur village near Tiruvarur, Tamil Nadu, fell ill after consuming the school’s mid-day meal on campus. A total of 64 students had eaten the meal along with chickpeas. Later, three students began vomiting after returning home and were admitted to the Tiruvarur Government Hospital. Soon after, 36 more students developed symptoms including vomiting and dizziness and were also hospitalised for treatment. District Collector Mohanachandran visited the hospital and reviewed the situation. Doctors suspected the illness could be linked to contaminated noon-meal food, and authorities directed that all affected students receive medical care.

#19 April 2025: Fifteen students at a government school in Tiruchirappalli district, Tamil Nadu, fell ill after consuming the mid-day meal served at the school. The students complained of vomiting and stomach pain, prompting authorities to call a medical team to examine them. Doctors administered glucose and medicines and suspected possible food poisoning, though the exact cause will be determined after testing the food and water samples. The students were initially taken to the Avi Kalipatti Primary Health Centre, while five students were shifted by ambulance to the Illuppur Government Hospital for treatment. All students were later discharged.

#20 June 2025: Over 50 students at Anaivari Panchayat Union Primary School reportedly fell ill after consuming breakfast suspected to have contained a lizard in Villupuram district. Several students fainted and vomited shortly after eating and were rushed to Kalpattu Government Primary Health Centre. Two temporary kitchen staff were dismissed, and the School Education Department launched an investigation.

#21 July 2025: In a government-run hostel linked to the Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School in the Courtallam area, nine female students fell ill after breakfast and were admitted to Tenkasi Government Hospital. The hostel is reportedly managed by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.

#22 August 2025: Twenty students from Kattinayakkanthoti Government High School near Perigai in Hosur, Krishnagiri district, Tamil Nadu, were hospitalised after falling ill following the mid-day meal served at the school. The incident occurred when students reportedly noticed a lizard and its droppings in the food. Soon after eating, several students began experiencing vomiting, dizziness, stomach pain and fainting. Teachers immediately discarded the remaining food and rushed the affected children to the Perigai Government Hospital. Later, the students were shifted to the Hosur Government Hospital for further treatment. Police in Perigai have registered a case and launched an investigation into the incident.

#23 August 2025: Eight students were hospitalized after a lizard was allegedly discovered in their breakfast of rava khichdi provided under the Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme at Punairuppu Government Primary School in Thiruvarur district.

#24 September 2025: At a Panchayat Union Middle School in Adhivaraganatham, Cuddalore district, a lizard was found in breakfast served under the government’s meal scheme. Eighteen students had already eaten before detection. Though no health issues were reported, they were treated and sent to Chidambaram Government Hospital for observation. Parents staged protests.

#25 September 2025: Thirty-seven students from a Government Middle School in Jambai near Kallakurichi, Tamil Nadu, fell ill on 8 September 2025 after eating the mid-day meal served at the school. The food, prepared for 89 students, was reportedly contaminated after a lizard was found in the meal. Soon after lunch, several children complained of nausea and vomiting. School staff immediately arranged medical assistance and rushed the affected students to the Manalurpettai Primary Health Centre, from where they were later shifted to the Tiruvannamalai Government Hospital for further observation. Doctors monitored the children for complications and later confirmed that all students were stable and discharged. Authorities launched an inquiry into the incident.

#26 September 2025: A food safety scare occurred at a Panchayat Union Middle School in Adhivaraganatham near Bhuvanagiri in Cuddalore district after a student reportedly found a lizard in the breakfast served under the government’s morning meal scheme. About 18 students had already eaten the food before the contamination was noticed. Although none of the children immediately reported health problems, medical staff from Bhuvanagiri Government Hospital were called to the school and provided initial treatment. Concerned parents rushed to the campus, causing tension with school staff. As a precaution, the 18 students were later taken by ambulance to Chidambaram Government Hospital for observation, where they remained stable.

#27 October 2025: Eighteen students from a Government Middle School in Kansalpaile village near Palacode in Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu, were hospitalised after falling ill following the mid-day meal served at the school. The students, studying from Classes I to VIII, had eaten lunch at school and returned home later in the day. Around 9 pm, ten boys and eight girls began experiencing vomiting and dizziness, prompting their parents to rush them to the Palacode Government Hospital. Three students were later referred to the Dharmapuri Government Hospital for further treatment. Local police from Marandahalli have begun an inquiry and are questioning the noon-meal staff and teachers.

#28 December 2025: Ten students from a government elementary school in Kannakkanpatti were hospitalised after complaining of stomach pain shortly after eating their midday meal. The school, which serves classes from Standards 1 to 5, had provided sambar rice and boiled eggs for lunch. Around 3.45 p.m., the headmistress alerted authorities when several children began reporting abdominal discomfort. As a precautionary measure, all ten students were taken to the Pudukottai Government Medical College Hospital for treatment. Doctors said the children reported that the pain started soon after eating, raising suspicion of possible food contamination or food poisoning.

Instances from 2026

#29 January 2026: Around 24 students from Panchayat Union Middle School in Odakalpalayam village, Sulthanpet block of Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, fell ill after consuming the mid-day meal served at the school. The students complained of vomiting sensations and stomach pain after returning home in the evening and were taken to nearby private hospitals. Nineteen students were discharged after first aid, while five remained under treatment. Officials from the School Education Department and food safety authorities visited the hospitals and began an inquiry. Food and water samples were collected for testing. Preliminary reports suggested the rice may have been undercooked, which could have caused the illness.

#30 March 2026: Thirty-three students at a Government Model School hostel in M. Naruthiyur near Thittakudi, Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu, fell ill after consuming food served at the hostel. The incident occurred on Saturday when several students complained of diarrhoea, vomiting and fainting after eating their meals. Initially, nine students who developed symptoms after lunch were taken to the Mangalur Government Hospital for treatment and later discharged. Health authorities subsequently organised a medical camp at the hostel to examine other students. Officials said the illness may be linked to the hostel food, which reportedly included drumstick spinach for lunch and chicken curry in the evening, and investigations are underway.

#31 March 2026: On 10 March 2026, 44 students from a Coimbatore Corporation Middle School in Kavundampalayam, Tamil Nadu, fell ill after eating the mid-day meal served at the school. Shortly after lunch, many students—mostly Class IV children—began vomiting and some reportedly fainted. Officials said the affected group included 30 boys and 14 girls. It was alleged that a lizard had fallen into the food, leading to suspected food poisoning. Forty-three students were rushed to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital, while one child was taken home by parents. Doctors treated the students and later discharged all of them. Authorities have launched an investigation into the incident.

The Verdict Voters Must Deliver

Tamil Nadu’s noon meal scheme was once a symbol of the state’s welfare success. But repeated incidents of contaminated food, hospitalised children and administrative lapses have begun to erode that legacy.

When such incidents occur once, they may be accidents. When they happen year after year across districts, they point to systemic negligence.

A government that proudly claims a “Dravidian Model” cannot ignore the safety of the very children its welfare schemes are meant to protect.

Ultimately, voters must decide whether this record deserves another term in power.

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The post Under 5 Years Of DMK’s Dravidian Model, 30+ Incidents & Over 900 Children Hospitalised Consuming Unsafe School Meals appeared first on The Commune.

When RN Ravi walked into Raj Bhavan, Chennai, in September 2021, DMK had just assumed power after 10 long years. Stalin’s government was confident, combative, and looking to consolidate. What they did not expect was a Governor who would not just sign papers and attend ceremonial functions – but would fight them on every constitutional front, moral platform, and public stage available to him.

On 5 March 2026, nearly four and a half years later, when Ravi was transferred to West Bengal, DMK seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The Man Who Walked In

Retd. IPS officer RN Ravi was no ordinary bureaucrat. He served as Joint Director of the Intelligence Bureau, headed the CBI’s Special Investigation Team in high-profile cases, and from 2014 onwards served as the Centre’s chief interlocutor for the complex Naga peace talks – a role that sharpened his instincts for navigating entrenched political hostility. He was appointed Nagaland Governor in July 2019 before being transferred to Tamil Nadu in September 2021. He arrived in Chennai battle-hardened. DMK mistook a ceremonial appointment for a ceremonial man. They would spend the next four and a half years paying for that mistake.

The Legislative Logjam — 12 Bills, 21 Held Simultaneously

The most consequential and sustained battle between Ravi and DMK was over legislation. From 2021 to 2023, the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed bill after bill as part of DMK’s governance agenda. Ravi treated each one not as a formality to be signed, but as a document to be scrutinised.

The numbers tell the story. Ravi withheld assent to 12 bills during his tenure – mostly relating to the appointment of Vice Chancellors in state-run universities and university administration reforms. At one point in May 2022, he had 21 bills sitting on his desk without assent simultaneously – an extraordinary constitutional standoff that had no modern precedent in Tamil Nadu’s political history.

Key battles included:

Anti-NEET Bill (February 2022): Ravi returned this bill after sitting on it for 142 days; the first major signal of how he intended to operate. The bill was re-adopted by the Assembly and sent back to him. He then referred it to the President of India taking it entirely out of the state government’s reach.

Online Gambling Prohibition Bill: Returned without assent; re-adopted by the Assembly; Ravi finally signed it only after re-adoption.​

10 University Amendment Bills: Withheld without substantive explanation – all aimed at stripping the Governor of Chancellor powers over state universities. Ravi referred two to the President and sat on the remaining ten.

DMK was forced to convene three special sessions of the Assembly in 2022 and 2023 specifically to re-enact bills that Ravi had returned or blocked – a humiliating legislative exercise that no Tamil Nadu government had been subjected to in living memory.​

When DMK finally ran to the Supreme Court in October 2023, the apex court’s verdict only came in April 2025, nearly two years later, declaring Ravi’s indefinite withholding “illegal and arbitrary” under Article 200. Even this ruling came while Ravi was still the sitting Governor. The 10 bills were deemed assented by the court, but by then, three to four years of legislative delay had already been successfully engineered. The anti-NEET bill, the university bills – all neutralised for the most politically critical years of DMK’s first term. DMK had won the legal battle. Ravi had won the war of attrition.

“A Bill Is Dead If The Governor Doesn’t Sign It”

In April 2025, in one of his most deliberately provocative public statements, Ravi declared at an event: “If a Governor does not approve a bill, it means the bill is dead.”. The statement was made while the Supreme Court case on his withheld bills was still pending. CM Stalin and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram publicly condemned the remark. It was the statement of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and was entirely unrepentant about it.

The Assembly Walkouts – Five Times in a Row

Ravi holds the unique distinction of having walked out of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly five consecutive times and for good reason – a record with no parallel in Indian constitutional history:​

January 2022 – First Walkout: In 2022, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi revealed that the DMK government refused to play the National Anthem in the Assembly, despite his insistence. Before his first address to the Assembly that year, Governor Ravi was informed that the National Anthem was not part of the session’s proceedings. He explicitly requested that it be played at the beginning and end of the session, alongside the Tamil Thai Vazhthu. The request was communicated to Speaker Appavu and Chief Minister MK Stalin, and the Governor even sent a formal letter reiterating his appeal. However, the National Anthem was not played, disregarding the Governor’s insistence.

January 2023 – Second Walkout: This pattern was also repeated during the 2023 winter session, where Raj Bhavan requested changes to the Governor’s speech, including respect for the National Anthem. However, the state government did not respond. The session saw protests from DMK allies, who disrupted the Governor’s speech with slogans and demonstrations, further straining relations.

January 2024 – Third Walkout: During the first session of 2024, the Governor noted with regret that his repeated requests to play the anthem were ignored. He refused to read the address prepared by the state government, citing strong disagreements on factual and moral grounds. Instead, he concluded his brief address with wishes for productive discussions and respect for Tamil Nadu and India.​

January 2025 – Fourth Walkout: On 6 January 2025 Governor RN Ravi walked out without delivering his customary address, after the National Anthem was not played following the Tamil Thaai Vaazhthu. The Governor exited the House within three minutes, stating that his repeated requests to play the Anthem were refused. In a statement, Raj Bhavan said the Constitution and National Anthem were disrespected and termed the refusal a grave concern. After his exit, Speaker M Appavu read the address.

January 2026 – Fifth Walkout: On 20 January 2026, he walked out of the Assembly shortly after the first session of the year began, objecting to the National Anthem not being played. The session commenced at 9.30 AM with the customary Governor’s address after the rendition of Tamil Thaai Vaazhthu. Soon after beginning his speech, the Governor raised the issue of the National Anthem not being played following the invocation and declined to continue his address. He then exited the House. ​

Each walkout was a nationally televised public indictment of the DMK government – forcing Stalin’s ministers onto the defensive every year like clockwork.

The Senthil Balaji Dismissal 

In June 2023, when DMK minister V. Senthil Balaji was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case, Ravi did something no Governor had done in decades, he issued a communique dismissing Senthil Balaji from the Council of Ministers without the Chief Minister’s recommendation.​

Stalin immediately pushed back, saying the Governor had no constitutional authority to dismiss a minister without the CM’s advice, and vowed to challenge it legally. The episode was unprecedented and deeply rattling for DMK, because it exposed the vulnerability of their most politically connected minister to direct Governor-level intervention. Ravi was effectively signalling: I will go places no Governor has gone before.

Pro-Hindu Stands That Made DMK Boil

Ravi’s most visceral confrontations with DMK were civilisational and he pursued them with zero apology.

Thiruvalluvar as Sanatani: At a public event in Tiruchirappalli, Ravi declared that Thiruvalluvar, the poet-saint whose Thirukkural is Tamil Nadu’s most sacred literary text, was a saint of Sanatan Dharma. DMK and Dravidian organisations have spent seven decades projecting Thiruvalluvar as a secular, rationalist, anti-Brahmin icon – the intellectual ancestor of their movement. Ravi’s claim cut the foundation of that narrative. Weeks of outrage followed.​

“Jai Shri Ram” at Student Event (April 2025): At a function with students, Ravi asked attendees to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. Non-profit organisations demanded his removal, citing violation of his constitutional oath. DMK called it “flexing majoritarian muscle” and “not acceptable in Tamil Nadu”. Ravi did not apologise.

Sanatana Dharma Advocacy: Repeatedly and publicly used the term “Sanatana Dharma” at events making DMK ministers visibly uncomfortable and triggering press conferences each time.
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​Ayodhya Ram Lalla Consecration – Exposing Hindu Suppression (January 2024): On the historic day of the Prana Pratishtha, Ravi visited the Sri Kodandaramaswami Temple in Chennai and published a detailed expose of how DMK’s administration had blocked Hindu priests, temples, and organisations from conducting bhajans, LED screenings, Annadanam, and special pujas to mark the occasion comparing the administrative restrictions to “Mughal-era persecution of Hindus”. The report went nationally viral.

“Has Tamil Nadu Become a Police State?”

When Ravi convened an education conference of university Vice Chancellors at Ooty, DMK allegedly used district police to intimidate VCs and pressure them not to attend. Ravi issued a sharp public statement: “Has Tamil Nadu become a police state? Is the Chief Minister afraid of the rise in educational standards that benefit Dalit students?” tying DMK’s authoritarianism directly to its impact on marginalised students.

“What Is Tamil Nadu Fighting For?”

When DMK adopted the political slogan “Tamil Nadu will fight, Tamil Nadu will win” as a rallying cry against the Centre, Ravi publicly asked: “What exactly are you fighting? There is no conflict” forcing CM Stalin to personally respond and justify his own slogan.

Demolishing the Dravidian Ideological Foundation

Perhaps Ravi’s most intellectually audacious and politically explosive intervention was his sustained, systematic dismantling of the Aryan-Dravidian divide theory that forms the very intellectual spine of the Dravidian political movement. This was not a one-off remark. Over four years, he mounted a coordinated, evidence-based assault on the colonial mythology that DMK has built its entire identity upon.

Caldwell Was a School Dropout: Ravi said this publicly, repeatedly, and without apology. At a March 2024 event in Raj Bhavan, he stated that Robert Caldwell – the 19th-century Anglican bishop-missionary whose A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages became the intellectual foundation of the Dravidian political movement was “a school dropout who did not even pass his formal education” recruited by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG). His famous book, Ravi declared flatly, was a “fake book” authored not as linguistics scholarship but as a colonial tool to divide Indians along racial lines and make communities more susceptible to Christian conversion.

“They started closing all native schools. Only missionaries were allowed to run them, and admission was given only after baptism. They targeted the poor and marginalised, that is how this fake narrative was planted,” Ravi said. Similarly, he called George Uglow Pope – another missionary whose translations of Thirukkural and Tamil Shaiva texts shaped Western perceptions of Tamil literature – another “school dropout sent to India on a mission to evangelise”.

The Aryan-Dravidian Divide Is British Fiction: At the Indus Civilisation Conference at DG Vaishnav College in March 2025, Ravi stated categorically that neither ancient Tamil literature nor Sanskrit texts contained any reference to “Aryan” as a race. The Aryan Invasion Theory, he argued, was a manufactured British imperial narrative designed to sow permanent civilisational division between north and south India. “It was the British design to divide the country and they picked up collaborators during the freedom movement,” he said. He pointed out that states speaking Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu had largely “moved away from the Dravidian ideology’s influence” only Tamil Nadu’s political ecosystem had kept the divisive narrative alive, threatening national unity.

Dravidian Ideology Is Colonial, Not Tamil: In June 2024, at another public event, Ravi declared: “Dravidian is a geographical division, not a racial one. The British fabricated this history as part of their divide-and-rule policy”. In December 2025, at a civilisation conference in Coimbatore, he repeated: “The Aryan-Dravidian divide is a myth. Attempts to split people along such lines are rooted in colonial manipulation, not historical truth”.

“Tamil Exceptionalism” as a Political Weapon: In November 2025, Ravi publicly accused the DMK government of exploiting “Tamil exceptionalism” — the idea that Tamil identity is uniquely under threat as a political tool to distract from governance failures. Tamil Nadu’s Law Minister S. Raghupathy summoned a press conference to rebut the charges calling Ravi’s remarks “baseless and insulting to Tamils”. The very fact that a Cabinet minister had to personally respond told its own story.
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​DMK’s Furious And Revealing Response: Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu delivered perhaps the most ironic response of the entire four-year standoff. In July 2023, after yet another Ravi attack on Dravidian ideology, he declared: “Governor RN Ravi has been working every day for making the principles of Dravidian ideology shine in the hearts of people of Tamil Nadu, and we thank him for it” – a sarcastic concession that Ravi’s provocations had actually increased public discourse on Dravidian identity. CM Stalin called him “allergic to Dravidian ideology” and asked publicly: “Is he Governor or Aryan?” – a statement that perfectly captured DMK’s inability to engage with Ravi’s arguments on substance.

In four and a half years, RN Ravi withheld 12 bills, walked out of the Assembly four times, dismissed a sitting minister unilaterally, exposed Hindu religious suppression, confronted DMK on Dalit atrocities, and survived death threats, ethnic insults, and national media attacks without flinching once.

DMK called him every name in the book. A party confident in its governance does not respond to a Governor with death threats and abuse. It responds with results.

Tamil Nadu has not had a Governor like RN Ravi since and given how loudly DMK cheered the change announcement on 5 March 2026, they intend to make sure it stays that way. West Bengal’s loss is Tamil Nadu’s loss. And Mamata Banerjee’s nightmare is just beginning.

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The post The Governor Who Refused To Bow: How RN Ravi Gave DMK Its Worst Nightmares appeared first on The Commune.