Madurai: DMK leader Stalin and brother Alagiri may be on warpath. But the former shielded the latter in a veiled manner by reeling the crime statistics of Madurai in the last three years of the present AIADMK regime, thus serving a counter to archrival and chief minister Jayalalithaa.
He listed the ‘political murders’ in the district but conveniently ‘forgot’ the murder of ‘Pottu’ Suresh, a close associate of Alagiri. Addressing a public meeting in support of the party’s Madurai and Theni candidates V. Veluchamy and Pon Muthuramalingam at Aanaiyur in the suburbson Sunday night, Stalin claimed, “In 2013 alone, there has been 113 murders and attempted murders, 162 incidents of burglary and dacoity, 56 cases of crime against women and 2459 cases of abduction and other crimes in the Madurai city.”
Recalling Ms Jayalalithaa’s speech in Madurai in the run up to the assembly elections in 2011 when she listed the incidents of crime, robbery and kattapanchayats (holding of kangaroo courts), Stalin asked her whether the law and order situation was good presently.
The AIADMK supremo had then launched a scathing attack on his brother and the then Union minister Alagiri who ran his fiefdom from Madurai down south and listed the names of anti-social elements, almost all of them Alagiri associates, and high number of incidents of crime including land grabbing cases in the district.
Stalin claimed there was no safety for the politicians in the city and said local functionaries of Hindu Munnani, MDMK and DMDK had been murdered.
But he refrained from mentioning the murder of Alagiri’s aide ‘Pottu’ Suresh in which ‘Attack’ Pandi, his brother’s another associate, has been named prime accused.
