Madras HC refuses to prevent police from arresting YouTuber 'Savukku' Shankar in multiple cases

Chennai, Aug 9 : The Madras High Court has refused to restrain Tamil Nadu Police from arresting YouTuber 'Savukku' Shankar alias A. Shankar, in multiple cases registered against him at various police stations across the state for his comments on women police personnel in a YouTube interview.

Justice G. Jayachandran on Thursday rejected the plea for interim protection.

Shankar’s counsel Balaji Srinivasan said, that the Supreme Court had granted interim bail to his client even in a preventive detention order passed under the Goondas Act and yet he was unable to step out of the prison because of multiple cases registered for the same incident.

The judge granted three weeks time for the government advocate to obtain instructions from the police after the law officer said that not all the FIRs that the YouTuber had listed out in an annexure could be related to the same interview and that in any case, he would require some time to verify the claim.

'Savukku' Shankar has approached the high court seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu Police to club all 17 First Information Reports (FIRs) that had been registered against him at various police stations across Tamil Nadu in connection with an interview he had given to a YouTube channel regarding the conduct of women police personnel.

Shankar, in his affidavit, said that the first FIR was registered against him by the Coimbatore cyber crime police, and after this multiple cases were registered before various districts in the same case. The YouTuber prayed before the court that he was being paraded before different courts with the sole intention of harassing him. He went on to state that the interview given by him regarding women police personnel had led to the registration of FIRs in the police stations in Coimbatore, Tiruchi, Madurai, Dindigul, Kancheepuram, Villupuram, Perambalur, Nagapattinam, the Nilgiris, Sivaganga, Nagapattinam, Salem, and Tirunelveli districts.

He said that he was a whistleblower who had been exposing alleged misgovernance as well as the misdeeds of bureaucrats.

Shankar told the court that multiple criminal cases had been booked against him ever since he was arrested first on May 4 and that he had also been detained under the Goonda Act. He alleged that the police were acting as per the desires of their political bosses and added that the cases were foisted against him to prevent him from raising his voice against the people in power.