The Madras High Court has criticised the manner in which economist and scholar A. Kalaiyarasan was recently picked up by police over a social-media post that later turned out to be from a fake account, in an order granting anticipatory bail to DMK councillor D. Sudha, who faced potential arrest over alleged derogatory remarks against Chief Minister Joseph Vijay.

Source: Live Law

Kalaiyarasan, an associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), was picked up from his home in the early hours of October 28, 2026, over an abusive social-media post against a TVK MLA. It was later found that the post had been made through a fake account using Kalaiyarasan's photograph. He was released the same day, the Chief Minister later met him at the Secretariat, and Kalaiyarasan has since filed a police complaint to the Director General of Police seeking action against the officers involved, Live Law reported. Awaaz Punjab reported the original detention on October 29.

"An apology is not accountability": Justice N. Ramesh

Justice N. Ramesh noted that Kalaiyarasan was picked up at 5 a.m. by policemen in plain clothes and was not even shown the complaint or a copy of the FIR on the basis of which he was being arrested. The court said the Chief Minister's personal intervention does not answer why plainclothes officers were sent to a citizen's doorstep at dawn over a social-media comment, or what action has followed against those who acted.

Source: Mirror Now

"Nothing about that episode is before me, and I decide nothing about it; I note it for the two lessons it carries. First, the grace shown at the end does not answer the questions the beginning raised: on what verification were plainclothes officers sent to a citizen's doorstep at dawn over a social-media comment, and what action has followed against those who so acted? An apology, however high its source, is not accountability, and a remedy that depends on the Chief Minister's personal intervention is not a remedy at all," the court said, according to Live Law.

The court added that Kalaiyarasan's eminence secured his release within hours and an audience at the Secretariat, while a common citizen with no access to power, taken at dawn on the same mistaken complaint, would have faced the lock-up, remand and a long trial before anyone asked whether the account was even his. "The measure of a police force is not how it treats the eminent when the press is watching, but how it treats the unknown when nobody is," the court said.

Bail for councillor; police must have an even hand

Making the remarks in its order granting anticipatory bail to councillor D. Sudha, the court noted that a preliminary enquiry was necessary in her case, custodial interrogation was not necessary, and the police had already collected the materials. It emphasised that in political-speech cases the police are expected to have an even hand between the ruling party and the opposition and not use arrest to intimidate, adding that the police serve the state, which endures, and not the party in government, which changes.