THOOTHUKUDI: A day after she was arrested for allegedly raising anti-BJP slogans while on a flight on which Tamil Nadu BJP president Tamilisai Soundarajan was travelling, 28-year-old S Lois Sofia was granted unconditional bail by Judicial Magistrate Tamilselvi in Thoothukudi on Tuesday. She had been remanded in judicial custody for 15 days on Soundarajan’s complaint on Monday.
Granting bail for Sofia, the magistrate told Dr AA Samy, her father, a retired government doctor, to advise Sofia against causing such problems again.
Advocate E Athisayakumar, who represented Sofia, told reporters, “We are not retracting the complaint against the BJP leader (Soundarajan) and her partymen for passing abusive comments against Sofia, and urge district police to take action.” State Human Rights Commission and National Commission for Scheduled Castes must act against Soundararajan, he said. Sofia reportedly belongs to a Scheduled Caste community.
Sofia was booked under Sections 290 and 505(1)(b) of IPC and Section 75 (1)(C) of Tamil Nadu City Police Act. Magistrate Tamilselvi, on Monday, struck Section 505(1)(b) of IPC as irrelevant to the case. Sofia, whose parents say she is pursuing doctoral studies in Canada, was released Tuesday evening.
Dr Samy told reporters the family had no connection to political parties or other organisations. “The BJP is trying to spoil my daughter’s academic career,” he alleged.
Soundarajan defended herself. “The way Sofia expressed herself was not like a common passenger. I suspected some movement might be behind her. So, I lodged a complaint,” Soundarajan told media at Chennai airport on Tuesday.
S Lois Sofia, the 28-year-old research scholar, is by her father’s account an academician with deep concern for her native Thoothukudi. Daughter of Dr AA Samy, a retired doctor, and Manohari, a retired staff nurse, from Kandan Colony near Third Mile in Thoothukudi, Sofia did her schooling from Holy Cross Convent in the town.
Dr Samy is a worried man now, as he fears that the episode aboard the flight might pose hurdles on Sofia’s academic career path as policemen have reportedly ‘taken’ her passport. Dr Samy said Sofia was conducting research in physics and mathematics at University of Montreal in Canada.
Dr Samy says that despite living abroad, Sofia kept abreast of the developments in the coastal district. She has penned articles for major online publications on issues like Sterlite, Methane extraction project and the eight-lane expressway among others.
For anti-Sterlite activist Fatima Babu, Sofia’s arrest was a shock . “She used to frequently call me to learn about the people’s agitation against Sterlite,” she said.
It is learnt that Sofia had reached Chennai from Canada on August 30 and on Monday had been travelling home to Thoothukudi by flight with her parents when the incident happened. She was hospitalised with abdominal pain after being remanded on Monday. Her lawyer E Athisayakumar alleged she had been illegally quizzed for over 10 hours which caused her mental agony.
On Tuesday evening, she was released from custody on getting bail. Meanwhile, State BJP president Tamilisai Soundarajan has referred to a tweet from a Twitter account, purportedly Sofia’s, in which she appears to have said that she was considering raising the slogan on the flight. In other tweets the user had criticised Sterlite, the Centre as well as discussing other issues. That account has since been made private.