The police on Tuesday arrested seven persons and remanded one of them for a WhatsApp video for objecting to the transport of a stone from Tiruvannamalai to Bengaluru for a Mahavishnu Vishwaroopam statue for the Kothandaramasamy temple. The objection raised on political grounds has been booked under causing religious enmity and obscenity among others. In the 30-second video, the accused is seen venerating ‘God’ and stating that ‘God is important’, but only objecting to the transport of the stone to Karnataka, “which refused to share water with Tamil Nadu”. A judicial magistrate’s court also remanded Magesh Kumar under the aforementioned sections. When The Hindu contacted Superintendent of Police Bandi Gangadhar on the use of the irrelevant sections for the video that was largely innocuous, he defended the use of the sections stating ‘legal experts’ were consulted.

Source: The Hindu February 05, 2019 20:13 UTC