Uprooting of trees, burning and stoning of buses, and blocking of roads marked protests across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry by PMK supporters all Wednesday even as their party chief S Ramadoss settled down in Tiruchy jail with a copy of the Gandhian Thoughts.
Around 2,000 people, 107 of them in Chennai alone, were arrested for vandalism, which left 120 buses damaged and four gutted.
Former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss met the media in Chennai and expressed displeasure over the jailing of the PMK founder on Tuesday, while his party cadre took to the streets, impelling government transport corporations to withdraw many buses from Chennai to trouble-torn Vanniyar pockets in the state. In Puducherry, the Vanniyar Sangam and PMK have called a bandh on Friday. A Puducherry Road Transport Corporation bus was among four buses damaged at Thavalakuppam, where protestors forced shopkeepers to down shutters. Traders in Thiruvandarkoil staged a counter roadblock to protest the forced closure of shops.
Several buses were stoned in Cuddalore and Villupuram districts. Prohibitory orders were imposed in Villupuram district. Violence also rocked places like Karaikal and Thanjavur, while in Kancheepuram 50 passengers of an Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation bus — 25 of them belonging to one family — had a miraculous escape when miscreants set it on fire without giving time for the passengers to disembark. The bus was headed for Tirumala.