2025-12-16

Portrait of a political hack

Political Theytubers have brought a welcome change in the political discourse in Tamil Nadu but have also made it a high-stakes game where competition is ruthless and a mix of intrigue, irresponsibility and backbiting has become the norm. The arrest of political commentator Savukku Shankar has triggered this post.

After the death of J Jayalalitha, I began to lose interest in Tamil Nadu politics. Not living in TN was also a factor. After the death of M Karunanidhi and Cho, TN politics just became boring. I had lost almost all interest. After an election, I wanted to see if Kamalahassan lost his deposit in every constituency his party competed and I was happy he did. However, the rise of a new party attracted my attention. They had captured around 6% of the votes. They seemed to have captured the votes of actor-turned politician Vijaykanth who had died. Post-J AIADMK was mirred in court cases and did not compete.

This party was called Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK). Literally, it means We Tamils Party but they are not a jolly group. Their definition of Tamils does not include Telugus or Marathas who had lived in TN for centuries. It strictly does not include Brahmin castes whose mother tongue is Tamizh (not Sanskrit). NTK actively courts Muslims who claim Urdu as their mother tongue. There are numerous scheduled castes and tribes for whom Tamil is not the mother tongue. They are supposed to be older than Tamil residents. Tamil god Murugan is supposed to be a koravan. Is Tamil their mother tongue? Tamils are the most devout followers of Hinduism but like Dravidian parties NTK reject Hindu gods except Murugan or Amman. At every banyan tree, there is a Ganesh temple in Tamil Nadu and it is here that generations of politicians have been making money hands over fists with their non-devotional rhetoric.

NTK is lead by a film director by name of Seeman. He is a controversial figure. He was a supporter of LTTE. He claims he was friends with its chief V Prabhakaran but many people say it is vain boast. He is also suspected of being a Christian. PGurus channel refer to him as Simon.

One former associate and current distractor of Seeman claimed in an interview with Shankar that Seeman had tried to change the name of his father when he was admitted to a hospital. In the comments section of such videos, there are claims that Seeman is a Keralite or that he is a plant of some intelligence agency of the central government. However, the biggest millstone around his neck was his former girlfriend who he had abandoned and was then posting embarrassing allegations and salacious details. One curious nugget that she mentioned was that Seeman used to receive large quantities of jewellery from somewhere. This ties in with allegations why he is working for some central agency or is under their blackmail. The fact that NIA investigations on him did not result in any cases reinforces this view.

One of the persons who tried to mediate with his former girlfriend was a Theytuber going by the name of Saattai Duraimurugan. Durai puts considerable effort into his videos. His video on the list of companies and institutions started by DMK minister Jagathrakshan would daze anyone. However, he is careless with facts and rumour. He also uses bawdy language. There is strong chauvinistic undertones. However, it will surprise ordinary people that the DMK operatives have been selling TN real estate to Andhra/Telengana benamis so much so that they have even renamed Thiruvannamalai on name boards! One allegation that a lot of people make against Karunanidhi family is that they are not really Tamils and that they are Telugu people. EV Ramaswamy, the idealogue of the Dravidian movement, was also a Telusu. Some interesting information revealed by Durai is that both Annadurai and Karunanidhi used to write soft porn literature prior to and/or in early political life.

There are serious allegations against Durai as well, particularly by another Theytuber Thamizha Thamizha Pandian. Pandian is a supporter of LTTE and Tamil Desiyam (nationalism). His politics is based on the lies peddled by EV Ramaswamy a.k.a Periyar. He says he used to have a magazine called Thamizha Thamizha but is now content being a Theytuber. Pandian says he knew PMK leader Ramdoss had a second wife and was the real power center, one that M Karunanidhi was aware of and activated whenever he needed Ramdoss' support. Pandian also says Ramdoss has acquired palayiram kodigal (thousands of crores) extorting businessmen in Vanniyar community when he becomes member of the ruling alliance.

Durai says Shankar hyped up allegations that he was involved with remnants of LTTE and money launderers. Durai was arrested by TN police for comments made at a political rally. They construed that his use of the common word sandalan (demon) offended a community that goes by the cast name Sandalan. The case should have been dismissed by the judge but Durai spent considerable time in jail. During this time, he got an infection in his urinary tract, which scared the bejeezus out of him. Apparently, there is a room in the jail where new inmates are initiated by being hung by their limbs and beaten by policemen. (This was in Puzhal Jail. When this jail was constructed, it was supposed to be a modern and model jail. Apparently, TN police had made it like just another jail where corruption and illegal activities are the norm.)

Shankar is the leading Theytuber of TN politics. He appears more professional. His arrest by TN police with back-to-back cases led to a disruption of his channel. TN police has refused to unlock his old channel. Shankar says TN police made him unlock his mobile phone by pointing guns at him. Durai also made a similar allegation. Numerous phone call recordings of Seeman, Shankar and Durai were revealed by other Theytubers who are obviously jealous of Shankar and Durai and are aligned with DMK. The call recordings are fake and spliced together using software, it is alleged.

Durai is no friend of Shankar. He says that NIA investigations were the machinations of Shankar. He accuses Shankar of being a hack, who is not loyal to any one political party or politician. Durai openly identifies as a NTK supporter. His accusations against Shankar is not that the latter is impartial but that he makes financial deals with the same politicians or political parties or businesses that he claims to oppose.

BJP Theytuber Maridas also claims that Shankar made false allegations against him and this caused him trouble with the police. Like Durai, Maridas faulted Shankar for not being loyal to one party and alleged that he extorts money from the people he makes accusations. He also showed a picture of a large building and claimed that Shankar bought it for his girlfriend Malathi. When Maridas was arrested, Shankar condemned it and noted that the large building in the photo was not owned by Malathi but that she owned a flat in a much smaller building next to it.

It is said that Shankar used to be a supporter of DMK. I was not aware of him during that time. Currently, he is opposed to the DMK and is supportive of any alliance that can defeat DMK. For this reason, he now supports AIADMK, particularly its leader EPS. On this front, he has criticised EPS distractors such as OPS, Dinakaran and Sengottaiyan. Pandian alleges that Shankar became a stringer for Kanimozhi, KN Nehru and other DMK functionaries who had become sidelined after the death of MK and the rise of his son Stalin and grandson Udayanidhi. Shankar made numerous allegations against Udayanidhi's film production ventures. Many Theytubers say Stalin family controls most of the cinema theaters in the state, which gives them a stranglehold on movie business. They also allege that besides deciding which movies can become successful and which one cannot, they also use this power to turn black money into white.

From Wikipedia: Shankar is a former police official. He used to work for the vigilance department, where he got the job on compassionate considerations after the death of his father. He was the source of the 2G scam audio tapes including conversations of Kanimozhi and police intel chief Jaffer Sait that caused serious embarrassment to DMK government in 2010-11. Shankar was fired, investigated, jailed and freed. Shankar's blog was initially anonymous but he adopted the Theytube platform to blog openly.

I became interested in Shankar after numerous reports in The Hindu about his arrest and court cases. I checked his videos and found them to be interesting. While he claims to be at heart Marxist and I claim to be passionately against all such enemies of the people, his other political observations and attitudes strangely resonated with mine. This may be because we are the same age.

Felix Gerald is a former NDTV (now with Adani) journalist and friend of Shankar. He has a channel and they have made a lot of interesting videos. Their discussion of the NSE scam is the funniest.

They also discussed the Kodanadu affair. I had ignored this scam during my exile from TN politics. According to Pandian, a lot of documents related to the assets of top AIADMK functionaries such as OPS and EPS were believed to be stored in the controversial Kodanadu bungalow. Someone asked a former thug to assemble a raiding party from Kerala to sneak into the compound and steal the documents and any treasure found there. Kerala team tied up a watchman who suffocated and died. While TN police looked askance, the team was caught by Kerala police merely on suspicion. One witness to the murder was run over by a car in TN. Pandian says it was hired by a powerful and mysterious woman from Bangalore. The driver of the car has given interviews. My judgement is that the woman is innocent. The collision of the witness' two-wheeler with the car was precipitated by a police team that was chasing him to kill him. The impact on the car was massive and not likely caused by the car. It was typical incompetent evidence tampering by the police. The Kerala raiding party accused have given interview to the tabloid Nakheeran, which now has a video channel. The case remains unsolved. Sasikala's relative Dinakaran, in a fit of anger, admitted before press persons recently that he found some files regarding the case in Jayalalitha's home after her death but he now regrets destroying them. (Dinakaran has long ago fallen out with AIADMK chief EPS.)

One video by both Felix and Shankar was cited by TN police to arrest them both on the charge of disparging the honour of women policemen and household help of judges. The grandson of a former prime minister was accused to have exploited hundreds of female government employees for favours such as transfers and promotions. Memory card copies of the video were carpet bombed on the streets of their hometown. While this happened in Karnataka, why could it not happen in Tamil Nadu? The media had no such questions. They blindly repeated the police allegations of bringing dishonour to women. The police also faked an accident and broke Shankar's hand. They also filed back-to-back goondas chargesheet against him. With help from AIADMK leaders, Savukku Shankar was freed from all cases by the judiciary.

Being a fearless maker of allegations, Shankar has numerous friends in the government who provide him with evidence of political and bureacratic skulduggery. This has caused intense consternation for the DMK. They seemed to have tried to make peace with him once. Shankar once mentioned that he met with the CM and his son but they made no headway. Stalin's only requirement was that his son not be criticized! An arrest followed.

DMK faces a long list of allegations (not just from Shankar) that includes excess charge on state liquor, support for illegal drug and alcohol peddlers, excess excavation of river sand, illegal sale of lotteries, land document double-dealing, forced acquisition of farm land for an airport and all-round financial mismanagement. Internally, DMK's ruling family has consolidated the party around them. Old party hands who were loyal stewards of M Karunadhi have been sidelined. Stalin has sidelined his step-sister Kanimozhi and brother Azhagiri. Within his own family, there is competition between his son Udayanidhi and son-in-law Sabarisan. Sabarisan used to be an IT project manager but has manages the social media presence for the party. Unofficially, he is supposed to be acting as Stalin's bagman. Udayanidhi is also supposed to have amassed a huge amount of money, as revealed by allegedly fake tapes of former finance minister Pazhanivel Thyagarajan.

Shankar has developed numerous feuds with a few top police officials. He has filed public interest petitions in courts against the state government about police appointments. In his last Arattai Arangam video, he claimed that Enforcement Directorate of the central government were closing in on maapilai saar (Sabarisan), icecream adhikari (city police commission Arun) and their benamis. In a previous video, he showed how city police had tried to frame another troublemaker by the name Varahi by releasing CCTV footage. He also interviewed the lawyer who was beaten inside the Bar Council by DMK alliance partner Thirumavalavan and his gang. Shankar has been raising hell like this and this new arrest followed.

The police arrived at his door and Shankar did not open the door. Shankar claimed that he had replied to the summons and asked the police to speak with his advocates. The advocates arrived and Shankar did not open the door. They then broke-opened the door, raided his personal belongings and arrested him.

Durai, Pandian and Nakheeran claimed with great familiarity with the case claimed that a film producer had filed a case. Durai claimed that a female producer had filed the case as she had no drug dealings with anyone. She had sought a retraction. Shanker refused and sought money so she filed the case.

Nakheeran's Prakash used the name of the father of one of the producers as the one who filed the complaint and that Shankar's team had assaulted him.

Meanwhile, two of the producers met the Press and claimed that they were middle-class folk and not rich drug dealers. They had pooled their hard-earned money, pawned their assets and acquired debt to become producers of the movie. They claimed that several Theytubers had used the name of the father of one of the producers as the one who had filed the case. This was not true, they said … even though the FIR filed by them mentions his name. Maybe the police writer expanded the initial. They said Shankar called them on the phone and asked them to bring 10 lakhs to settle the matter. When they arrived with one lakh and asked him to issue an apology video, he got angry and kicked one of them them. Shankar's girlfriend and fellow anchor Malathi and a former employee Leo and a few others came and made death threats. The producers claimed they left and called the police from outside Shankar's office. One police official came but nothing happened. Then, they went to a government hospital (a phot of BP check was shown) for treatment because they were poor. Next day, they filed the case. The police asked them a lot of questions but did not take action until yesterday. They are now happy. Malathi also needs to be arrested as she had also abused and assaulted them, they urged. In the press meet, the two producers claimed they had call recordings to prove Shankar's guilt and they had provided it to the police.

One of the two producers met Felix Gerald who posted that video. He claimed that he has recordings of the phone calls that Shankar made. In those recordings, does Shankar demand 10 lakhs, asks Felix? No, but it can be assumed that is why he called, says the producer. Here, their case started to fall apart. The producer further admitted that Shankar asked him to make a public denial about drug business involvement and that he would publish that denial in his video channel. But, the producer says he insisted on a blanket apology video from Shankar. This, he says, irritated Shankar and he violently kicked the producer in the belly area. Felix said it was a standard practice for media organizations to ask for such a denial and it was unreasonable to expect an apology video because nothing has been proven conclusively. The producer claimed that distributors were not buying the rights to his movie. Will Shankar compensate him for his tweet and the few minutes of the video? This made clear the motive why the producers foisted the case on Shankar. The allegations totally fell apart when the producer claimed Malathi barged in and asked her team to murder the producers and claimed that they were so powerful that even the police would be able to do nothing about it. Viewers of the channel know about the numerous cases that the police foisted against Shankar in various parts of Tamil Nadu and the difficulty they had in making regular video uploads. Not only that the police had grabbed the motorcycle of one of the staffers and delayed releasing despite paying the fine. It was only after approaching the court that the petty police officials grudgingly released the vehicle. Not satisfied with freezing the funds of their new-media operation, the police has also seized Shankar's mother's pension account. Shankar had also alleged that one Congress politician and recipient of Chennai Corporation contracts had sent a team of conservancy workers to his mother's rented home and dumped raw sewage. The workers livestreamed this home invasion on the Internet but the police had not arrested anyone. Would someone suffering so much claim total impunity from murder, assault someone who had visited their office and grab one lakh cash from him too? As an attempt to murder and stealing 1 lakh rupees are serious crimes that would result in an immediate arrest and something no journalist would dare to do, Felix asked whether the need for revenge was why the producer filed such a false case. The producer then became combative and started making accusations. He said he is supporting Shankar because he is a friend and also that Leo is hiding in the same office! The producer lost his composure and started using bad language. He also started speaking like a DMK mouthpiece and claimed that someone who might dare to criticise the CM, his son and the police would be bold enough to do such crimes. Finally, he dared Felix to publish the interview in full. Felix did so promptly.

Shankar is also to blame. He should have opened the door and read the warrant. He should have disclosed that the lawyer who had taken over BSP after goonda leader Armstrong's death had represented Malathi's divorce from her husband. Fair disclosure! He also belatedly and casually mentioned that he had met with CM, his son and former finance minister without going into much detail how such meetings were arranged despite the obvious enmity between them. Both Shankar and Malathi seem to create that their earnings from Youtube is not much but both of them were living in a hi-rent apartment complex. The fact that they had to rebuild their media operation after the police seized all of their equipment and froze their bank accounts may have been a factor. They had to start a new video channel. While it is approaching a million very quickly, others like Durai had breached the million mark while Shankar was cooling his heels in the clink. In fact, Durai posted a video in which he claimed he had spent ₹10 crore on a new office. So, why would Shankar not be able to afford a high-class apartment? Maybe they do not want their new accounts to be frozen. During his most recent, the police searched everywhere but could not find his mobile! In the present case, Shankar failed to disclose that the actor who played the hero in the movie and against whom he had alleged drug links was known to him (per Prakash).

Prakash says Malathi has acquired huge estates in their hometown but shows no land department records to prove it. He also suggest Shankar's wealth could in the range of 500 to 700 crores, citing unnamed sources. Pandian, as usual, claims Shankar is worth palayiram kodigal. Then, that begs the question, why did Shankar go into fight mode for a few lakhs? The answer is of course this is a false case. The police wanted to know what secret evidence Shankar had against Stalin's son, his son-in-law and police officials, and who was providing the information to him. To that end, the allegations were believable for the police. At worst, Shankar can be stopped from publishing videos until election time.