CHENNAI: A recent widely-shared video of Higher Education minister P Viswanathan rubbing the legs of young girls and cracking their toe knuckles has drawn sharp criticism from several quarters.
A day after DMK leader S S Sivasankar criticised the minister’s actions as inappropriate, the party’s legal wing on Wednesday filed a Pocso complaint against Viswanathan. For his part, the minister alleged the DMK had twisted his act of giving “first aid” to students who had fainted during an awareness run in Madurai.
In a statement on Wednesday, he said he had rushed to help children who had collapsed after the run in Madurai. The 4-km run was held in Melur in Madurai district on June 21 as part of an anti-drug awareness run organised on to mark the birthdays of Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
According to sources, the minister, along with other guests, greeted the young athletes. In the video of those moments, he is seen rubbing the legs of the young girls, even resting his arms on one child’s legs.
Vidya Reddy, of Tulir - Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, told TNIE the minister’s actions were outrageous.
“What is the message being sent, when a public figure and person in authority, thinks it is acceptable to be inconsiderate of a child’s boundaries and body autonomy? What is worse is the number of bystanders and onlookers who just stood by passively,” she said.
“Society’s tendency to normalise behaviour that blurs boundaries is how abusers get the impunity to commit acts of greater violence,” she added.
DMK legal wing member Saranya Natarajan filed a criminal complaint against the minister, accusing him of inappropriate physical contact with minor girls at the event. Her complaint invokes sections 11, 12 (sexual harassment) and 23 (prohibition of disclosure of child’s identity in media) of the Pocso Act read with provisions of the BNS.
In her complaint sent to inspector general of the Singapen Special Task Force of the Greater Chennai Police and the DGP, among others, she alleged that the minister, present “in his capacity as a public official and a political representative of the ruling government”, engaged in “deliberate, uninvited, and inappropriate” physical contact with the girls under the guise of encouraging the participants.
