Chennai: Nineteen-year-old Ranjith, a painter in Ashok Nagar, is the latest Tik-Tok star to land in police custody after his micro-brief video outside the local police station went viral and enraged the cop community.
The 15-second video has the youth in camouflage shirt and sporting a bizarre flowing hairdo, enacting a Tik-Tok video to a Kollywood Robin Hood song, stepping out stylishly from the Ashok Nagar police station. What must have irked the police is the background song from ‘Masilamani’ movie - depicting the hero as a bad guy to law but ‘pure gold’ when it comes to helping the local poor.
Ranjith’s Tik-Tok went viral on Saturday on multiple cyber-platforms and got the city police to launch a search for the ‘star’. They quickly picked up the guy since he was not a stranger anyway, having visited the station a few times before for carrying out petty repairs and painting works.
Notwithstanding his pleading that his was “just an innocent prank” devoid of any evil designs against the society at large and the cops in the station inparticular, Ranjith was hauled up before the SHO for some ‘intense grilling’ and thereafter remanded to custody by a city magistrate. The poor prankster has been locked up in the Puzhal jail.
There have been at least two other Tik-Tok video cases that got the Tamil Nadu police worked up in recent months.
Four youths have been jailed in Virudhunagar early January this year after they posted a Tik-Tok video inspired by Karthi’s Siruthai movie featuring a dialogue critical of the police. They had shot the little video outside the local police station after finding it deserted except for a lone woman constable when they went there to obtain a ‘pass/permit’ to take part in the death anniversary of Pasupathi Pandian.In another case, a mechanic and his friend in Salem landed in prison late January after posting a Tik-Tok video of the former stepping out in style from a police vehicle that had gone to his shed for servicing. This video had a Vijayakanth dialogue from Thavasi and there was nothing offensive against the uniformed force.
Perhaps the mechanic’s (mis)use of police vehicle got the duo into trouble.
