Techie in Trouble for Aiding Blogger over Savukku

CHENNAI: A 36-year-old techie, hailing from Srivilliputhur, was taken into custody on Thursday by sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) on the charge of hosting the controversial website, Savukku.

This followed a John Doe order of Madras High Court on a case filed by Sun TV news reader and lawyer Mahalakshmi.

Acting on the court’s orders, police detained Pothi Kalimuthu, who had reportedly sponsored the website domain and was maintaining the server. An engineering drop-out, Pothi had bought the website which was hosted in France for which the server is located at Singapore.

The website had carried a host of reports that allegedly portrayed Mahalakshmi in  bad light, following which she moved Madras High Court to shut it down. The court, issuing a directive to register a case, also banned the website for carrying allegedly slanderous articles.

The site savukku.net, is reportedly run by former DVAC staff-turned-whistleblower blogger, A Shankar.

Despite the ban, the website continued to host mirrors of the site using names that resembled close to the original name, Savukku, and continued the attacks, this time including the judge of the High Court who is hearing the case. The court ordered the officials to trace the new sites and block them as well, besides arresting those connected to it.

Following this, Shankar obtained anticipatory bail in one of the cases while the other is in trial. After tracing the IP address, officials here made a request through the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to trace the address of the owner of the domain, explaining the sensitivity of the case to France Telecom.

Speaking to Express, Shankar said he got acquainted to Pothi through online and that the latter had volunteered to help him in launching the new website following the blocking of the original site. “He volunteered and refused to take money for hosting the website. He had been maintaining the server for the past 6 months,” Shankar said.