Suryah was arrested for a tweet wherein he criticized a CPI(M) MP, Su Venkatesan, on a social issue. He has been sent to 15-day judicial custody. “Sanitation worker’s life lost by communist councillor,” Suryah said. “Madurai MP S.Venkatesan who keeps fake silence! Your fake politics of separatism stinks worse than that cesspool. Find a way to live as a human being, mate!”

The CPM, however claimed there’s no Pennadam town panchayat in Madurai or a councillor named Viswanathan as alleged by Suryah in his tweet. They claimed it was a fabricated allegation.

BJP state president K Annamalai on the other hand took to Twitter calling the arrest as one that was “highly condemnable.”

“His only mistake was to expose the nasty double standards of the Communists, allies of DMK. Using state machinery to curtail free speech and getting jittery about the slightest criticism is unbecoming of a democratically elected leader and, indeed, are signs of an autocratic leader in the making. Drawing inspiration from autocrats, TN CM Thiru MK Stalin is turning the state into a lawless jungle,” he said in his tweet.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar too chimed in and condemned the arrest. “Stalin (Tamil Nadu CM) is desperate to prove that his name is like the original Stalin, where freedom of people and their rights don’t matter anymore and he wants to put them in jail,” he said on Saturday.