Cho grilled by police about Gurumurthy's article

Monday, February 14 2005 19:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: Political satirist and editor of Tamil weekly Thuglak, Cho S Ramaswamy, was today (Feb 14, 2005) 'interviewed' by a police team from Kancheepuram at his office in Chennai on some articles written by columnist S Gurumurthy on the Sankararaman murder case, which appeared in the weekly recently.

The team from Vishnu Kanchi Police station, which paid a visit to the newspaper office and made enquiries with the New Indian Express Chairman and Managing Director Manojkumar Sonthalia about some articles carried by the paper written by Gurumurthy, spent over 45-minutes 'interviewing him'.

Later the Tamil film comedian and former Rajya Sabha member Cho told reporters that he would continue to publish articles of Gurumurthy.

"If it was illegal, I would not have published it", he said.

Asked whether the police had exceeded their limits by questioning him and the others, Cho said that as far as his 'interview' was concerned, "I have been cited as a witness. Nothing hostile in it. As far as Gurumurthy is concerned, it is an instance of police harassment. The case has no substance and the charges are flimsy. It will not stand scrutiny of the court", he said.

Cho said he said, "No intimidation, but in Gurumurthy's case, it is harassment. They interrogated Gurumurthy and all of a sudden all this is happening. It is intriguing. I don't understand it at all", he said.

PTI