'Schizophrenic' CRPF jawan arrested for beheading Periyar statue in TN

Chennai: A CRPF personnel has been arrested for vandalising Periyar’s statue in Tamil Nadu’s Pudukottai. The jawan has been placed under suspension.

According to reports, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) head constable has informed the police that he was drunk.

The police said that he had climbed on the platform, smashed the head of the statue and placed it near a traffic roundabout. The CRPF personnel was identified with the help of footages captured from a CCTV camera installed in the area.

Also read: Statue vandalism continues: Periyar bust beheaded in Pudukkottai

According to a CRPF statement, the personnel is under treatment for Schizophrenia in Hyderabad and was on a 30-day leave.

A statue of Dravidian icon and social reformer EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, was vandalised in Pudukkottai on Tuesday.

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, were arrested in connection with an earlier 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.

Also read: PM condemns vandalism of statues, Home asks states to take action

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.