Savukku’s relentless battle for justice

We have lost count of the number of times the authorities have sought to clamp down on our website(s). 

We kept coming back and catching the vested interests off guard. But this time it is our turn to be caught unprepared, it looks like. All our registered domains are now choked.

Apparently all ending with “vukku” have been targeted. And as mentioned earlier, one of our well-wishers,  who was helping us out of goodwill, has also been arrested. So for now,  the authorities might have emerged triumphant – well, savukku the name, currently stands blocked.

So be it. Still we have this blog spot we had used earlier on. How long we don’t know. But trust us we will be up and running in some form or other. We refuse to be silenced.

WE DARE FOR WE ARE CONCERNED.

Started as a blog (savukku.blogspot.com) in 2009. It is a collective effort of people concerned with social issues and are willing fight all odds in their quest for justice.

The blog was started only after all efforts to publish documents against Mr Jaffer Sait, a senior police official, could not be published in any media.  

Achimuthu Shankar, one of our longest-serving contributors, was arrested, after an article against the then Intelligence chief Jaffer Sait was carried.  After the arrest, the site’s popularity went soaring. Connected news item.  

  

Savukku was the first site to expose Housing Board’s discretionary quota scam.  Subsequently, a case was registered by the DVAC against Jaffer Sait and Karunanidhi's Personal Security Officers, based on the documents published by Savukku.   

Exposed  the avowedly spiritual outfit the Isha group's building violations

Continuously highlighted the rot in judiciary and in the state police department, inviting the ire of many judges and senior police officials.

But the present developments could be traced to an article carried by us in May last year on how an advocate named Mahalakshmi was harassing an in-law of hers, misusing her contacts at various levels. She goes on to file a complaint with police and also files a defamation case in a magistrate Court.

She further seeks a direction from the High Court to the police to register an FIR against Shankar, and it is granted.

Subsequently, she files a petition for direction to police to investigate the case properly.   After six months, the matter comes up before the High Court again, this time with Justice CT Selvam presiding.

It is at this juncture Savukku gets hold of the now (in)famous 2G-related audio tapes. Getting whiff of the explosive scoop, lot of persons contact us and seek to alternately coax and intimidate us. Lot of money was also dangled before us in an attempt to stall the publication of the transcript of the tapes.

But we are not to be dissuaded, and the expose sets off shock waves across the nation.

Justice C T Selvam orders arrest of the designer of the website, on the very day of the publication of the transcripts.  ToI news item. 

  

Also Achimuthu Shankar, identified as the person running/managing Savukku, is ordered to be arrested by Justice Selvam. The judge would not let go of the case thereafter.

Just as the apex was monitoring such crucial cases like Godhra riots or 2G spectrum, he monitors closely the developments and observes at one stage that given the sheer effrontery of Shankar, any number of cases can be filed against him, hauling him up separately for each and every article published by him, since the site was founded.

  

We have repeatedly published this picture and also pointed out that it was he who literally bailed out DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s grandson, an accused in the multi-crore granite mining scam. When all others were promptly arrested and had to spend varying times behind bars pending trial, Durai Dayanidhi alone could get away without spending an hour in police lock-up.

He was granted anticipatory bail by this same Selvam even when he had failed to surrender to the police when an earlier anticipatory bail plea was turned down by another judge of the Madras High Court. Times of India News Item

 It is this order we never fail to hammer home to our readers.  An unfazed Selvam orders blocking of the website savukku.net,  though advocate Mahalakshmi never asked for such an order.

Then we became Savukku.in and when blocked, we were newsavukku.com,  and then we turned into newsavukku.org.

Simultaneously we were also running mirror sites named ctselvam.com and ctselvam.net, just to express our scorn over the pettiness as seen in the repeated gag orders.  Justice Selvam went to the extent of issuing directions to the organisation National Cyber Safety and  Security Standards whose job is to safeguard the nation from cyber threats !!!.  Link 

Then we come to know that Justice Selvam is involved in a raging property dispute and has sought to haul up a cousin of his for contempt of court, because he dared make him an accused in one of his petitions, charging His Lordship with gross misuse of his powers.

We dared when the rest of the media won’t touch the story.

Promptly Pothi Kalimuthu is arrested and remanded; all domains are blocked.   The New Indian Express news item. 

A Public Interest Litigation has been filed against the closure of savukku by journalist T.N.Gopalan, and the same is pending before the Madras High Court.  

We might have run out of luck for the moment, but we don’t run out of ideas Justice Selvam.

We will fight back. 

SAVUKKU EDITORIAL TEAM