Chennai, Nov 07: In an extraordinary action, Tamil Nadu Assembly today ordered the arrests of six senior journalists, including two top editors of the 125-year-old daily 'The Hindu' on a charge of breach of privilege and "gross contempt" of the house through an editorial in April this year and awarded them 15 days simple imprisonment.
After reading out his order in the house, Speaker K Kalimuthu issued arrest warrants against editor N Ravi, executive editor Malini Parthasarthy, publisher S Rangarajan, chief of bureau V Jayant and special correspondent Radha Venkatesan of The Hindu. The editorial was based on an article written by Jayant and Venkatesan, who is now abroad.
Amidst protest from the entire opposition, Kalimuthu also ordered the arrest of S Selvam, editor of DMK mouthpiece 'Murasoli', for publishing the translated version of the impugned editorial in The Hindu.
He also suspended the assembly passes of all the reporters of the two dailies for 15 days.
Executive editor of the Hindu, N Ram hit out at the assembly's action describing it as "outrageous" and said the paper would fight it out in the court.
Immediately after the speaker's order, a police team reached The Hindu office on the arterial mount road in the heart of the city to execute it.
Bureau Report