Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Aadhav Arjuna. File | Photo credit: X/@AadhavArjuna
Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Aadhav Arjuna “absconded” immediately after the Karur stampede that left 41 dead and then posted an inflammatory tweet suggesting a rebellion against the Tamil Nadu government by the youth and General Z, as happened in Sri Lanka and Nepal, the Chennai High Court on Wednesday said.
Before Justice AD Jagadish Chandira, senior counsel NR Elango, appearing for the prosecution, urged the judge not to follow the arguments of senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who argued that there was no malevolent act on Mr Arjuna’s part to incite riot and therefore a First Information Report (FIR) must be registered against him.
Mr. Elango asked the court to take into account the circumstances under which the tweet was posted on the X platform. “On September 27, there was a stampede at a political campaign in which this petitioner was actively involved. He ran away. He did not take responsibility. He disappeared. Then he surfaced on X at midnight on September 29,” a senior lawyer said, reading out the Tamil tweet.
“The whole country was seething with great grief that night. Hon’ble President of India, Prime Minister and all were worried about the stampede but this petitioner escaped and posted this tweet after the stampede he was responsible for,” said a senior lawyer, arguing that editing/deleting the tweet will not exempt him from facing prosecution.
When the judge wanted to know if Mr. Arjuna admitted that he had posted the allegedly condescending tweet, Mr. Singhvi replied that the petitioner posted the tweet at 11.28pm on September 29 but edited it within minutes by removing the references to Nepal and Sri Lanka and then the entire tweet was deleted at 2.02am on September 3. only available for 30 minutes, he said.
However, Mr Elango pointed out to the court that the tweet attracted 102 thousand views in those 30 minutes. “The expungement will not absolve him of the crime,” the senior counsel said, reading out Justice N. Anand Venkatesh’s 2023 judgment refusing to quash the FIR registered against actor S.Ve. Shekher also for sharing a derogatory post written by someone else on his Facebook page.
“The fact remains that the current petitioner’s tweet was seen by more than one million people. Only because this FIR was registered on September 30 itself, everything was prevented. Otherwise, the fallout could not have been stopped. The quick registration of the FIR against the petitioner stopped the fallout,” the senior lawyer said, insisting that the police must be allowed to investigate the case.
He also said that the investigation is currently in its nascent stage and that the police are required to conduct a full investigation in such cases. As Mr Elango could not conclude his arguments by the end of the day, the judge adjourned the hearing on the FIR quash plea till Friday and ordered the police not to submit a final report to the Magistrate’s Court until then.
Published – 05 Nov 2025 20:26 IST
