Statue vandalism continues: Periyar bust beheaded in TN

Chennai: A statue of Dravidian icon and social reformer EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, was vandalised by unidentified people in Tamil Nadu’s Pudukkottai.
A case has been registered and investigation is on, news agency ANI reported.
The statue of Periyar was beheaded by miscreants.
The incident comes two weeks after, a statue of Periyar was vandalised in Vellore. Two men, one of them a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, was arrested in connection with an earlier attack.
The BJP National Secretary H Raja, in a Facebook post, had said, “Who is Lenin? What is his connection to India? What is the connection of communists to India? Lenin’s statue was destroyed in Tripura. Today Lenin’s statue, tomorrow Tamil Nadu’s EVR Ramaswami’s statue”, allegedly triggering the attack.
The act of defacing and vandalising of statues continue even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his strong disapproval after the vandalism of statues in Tripura and Tamil Nadu. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had ordered states to take strong action to check such incidents.
Hours after the results of Tripura Assembly election were declared on March 3, a statue of the communist icon Vladimir Lenin was bulldozed by a group of right wing supporters in the state’s Belonia town, triggering a series of attacks on statues of political leaders.
Statues, including those of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi were also vandalised across India.
Last week, black ink had been splashed at a statue of first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru in Katwa’s Telephone Maidan in Kolkata. The statue was cleaned later.