Tamil Nadu

Bihari workers not attacked in Tamil Nadu: DGP says after Nitish Kumar raises concern

Speaking to TNM, Tamil Nadu DGP Sylendra Babu said that he told Bihar DGP RS Bhatti that misinformation was being shared on social media and in news reports.

Written by : Akchayaa Rajkumar
Edited by : Shabbir Ahmed

Tamil Nadu Director General of Police (DGP) Sylendra Babu issued a statement on Thursday, March 2 clarifying that Bihari migrant workers were not being attacked in Tamil Nadu. The DGP’s statement comes hours after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that he came to know from media reports that migrant workers from his state are being attacked in Tamil Nadu. The Chief Minister was seemingly referring to a report from the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, which alleged that Biharis in Tamil Nadu were facing “Talibani” style attacks. The newspaper – based on a phone call with a Bihari man in Tamil Nadu – claimed that 15 Biharis had received life threats. A video story accompanying the report showed visuals of altercations between two groups of men. The report stated that nearly 15 Biharis were killed in Tamil Nadu and that people from Bihar were being attacked solely for speaking in Hindi.

Speaking to TNM, DGP Sylendra Babu said that he had reached out to his counterpart in Bihar, DGP RS Bhatti, and refuted the reports being shared in the media and on social media. “The videos that are being circulated on social media are four months old and show clashes between migrant workers belonging to Bihar and Jharkhand. Another video is of a murder that took place in Coimbatore outside a court complex last month. No attacks on migrant workers have taken place in Tamil Nadu,” Babu said.

Sources also confirmed to TNM that Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary V Irai Anbu spoke to Bihar Chief Secretary Ameer Subhani regarding the issue, and refuted the claims in social media posts and news reports about attacks on migrant workers belonging to Bihar.

The videos that are doing the rounds on Twitter show one man being attacked by a group of people who flee the scene immediately after the assault. Another video shows a grievously injured man being laid down on the floor while onlookers say that he needed to be rushed to the hospital. The identities of the injured men in both videos are unclear. Sharing these videos, a Twitter user claimed that Hindi-speaking north Indian workers were being attacked in Tamil Nadu. In a video message, the DGP responded saying that the videos shared by the user, @TanveerPost, were “false and mischievous.” Here too, the DGP clarified that the clashes in the videos were not between Tamils and Bihari migrant workers. The tweet with the videos have now been deleted. 

Referring to the videos, Sylendra Babu said, “The two videos are false. These two incidents happened earlier in Tirupur and in Coimbatore. In both cases, it was not a clash between the local people and migrant workers. One was a clash between two groups of north Indian migrant workers. The other was a clash between two groups of local residents in Coimbatore.”

The same Twitter user shared a poster that had pictures of Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi founder Velumurgan along with a Hindi caption photoshopped on it. The photoshopped text said that jobs in Tamil Nadu must be reserved for Tamil people and north Indians must be “removed.” The poster also said that north Indians must not be given any space to build homes, companies, or businesses in Tamil Nadu and that factory owners should also not employ them. The Twitter user claimed that such posters have come up all over Tamil Nadu and had tagged the state’s Chief Minister MK Stalin asking what the problem was with north Indians.

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