Tribal boy who was made to remove TN minister’s slippers files complaint against him

Following the outrage over the Tamil Nadu forest minister Dindigul C Sreenivasan’s discriminatory act of making a tribal boy remove his footwear, the minor boy from Nilgiris has filed a complaint against the minister.

The boy, identified as Kethan, has reportedly mentioned that he felt embarassed and humiliated when he found that the video of him unbuckling the minister’s shoes had surfaced online. He went on to file a case against Sreenivasan under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. “After I came to know that the videos were flashed in the media, I was very embarrassed, and I broke down,” Kethan had stated in his letter to the police, according to a report.

The minister was preparing to enter a temple in Nilgiris’ Mudumalai, where he had gone to inaugurate a rejuvenation camp for captive elephants. In the video that went viral, he was seen gesturing two minor boys to remove his footwear in order to enter the temple. According to a report, the photographers were asked to stop taking pictures when the incident happened while another minister apparently blocked their view. The forest minister has been on the receiving end of criticism following the incident, with several social media users expressing their contempt over Sreenivasan’s unabashed act of caste supremacy.