The Bharatiya Janata Party’s H Raja was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine by Chennai’s Special Court for Trial of Cases Against MLAs/MPs for his allegedly disparaging statements on Periyar and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi. However, on his attorney’s plea, Special Judge G Jayavel postponed the sentence for 30 days so that the parties might appeal.
The attorneys for Raja stated that they planned to file an appeal with the Madras High Court. The judge granted his counsel the permission after they promptly paid fines of Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 in the the two different cases. The orders were issued over Raja’s 2018 remarks.
Raja had tweeted about EV Ramasamy, widely known as Periyar, calling him a caste bigot and urging that the statues of the atheist leader be destroyed. He also claimed that Kanimozhi is the illegitimate child of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi. Justice Anand Venkatesh declared that Raja’s remarks veered toward hate speech when he initially petitioned the Madras High Court in 2023 to have the First Information Reports (FIRs) against him quashed.
Raja had asked the court to dismiss the case, contending that the remarks were political in nature and that there was insufficient proof of his threats against the Periyar statue. He further argued that a third party had filed the complaint without his knowledge or approval. However, the court ordered the special court to conclude the trial within three months and declined to dismiss the case.
The conviction resulted from the court’s determination that the police had adequately demonstrated that Raja was the author of the posts from his social media account. The court decided that his words against the statue and Kanimozhi were not just political but also defamatory, describing them as provocative. The legal team representing H. Raja had insisted that the statements were taken out of context and intended as political commentary.
The court stated that while everyone had the right to hold different opinions, ideas, and beliefs from Periyar, he was not allowed to cross the “Lakshman Rekha” and utter anything that would directly offend Tamil Nadu’s Periyarists. “His assertion had a negative connotation and infuriated the daughter by presenting her in an insensitive way,” the court ruled in Kanimozhi’s case.
Raja had filed a second appeal to revoke the FIR in April of this year. The court rejected the request on the grounds that it lacked merit. It observed that the second quash petition’s arguments were factual and had been covered in the first petition. Raja had then filed an appeal with the Supreme Court. The bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra made an oral remark regarding the necessity for politicians to exercise caution when making public remarks while dismissing the SLPs that the Minister had filed.
The BJP National Secretary at the time, H. Raja was accused of insulting DMK MP Kanimozhi in 2018 by referring to her as the “illegitimate child” of DMK President M. Karunanidhi. Supporters of the DMK protested this comment, holding a large agitation and setting Raja’s effigy on fire in Coimbatore. Kanimozhi replied that she was waiting for the BJP to respond to Raja’s remarks but wouldn’t “stoop low” to reply to his tweet.
A Facebook post that Raja made regarding Dravidian ideologue EV Ramasamy “Periyar” also drew criticism when he threatened to demolish Periyar’s statues, much as Lenin’s statue was taken down in Tripura. Many political groups, including the DMK, Congress, and the banned terrorist outfit Popular Front of India, strongly condemned these posts following which complaints were made to a number of police stations, including Karungalpalayam Police Station and Erode Nagar Police. Later, he apologized and removed the post, maintaining it was created by his Facebook administrator without his permission.
