YouTuber Maridhas was arrested by the cybercrime police in Madurai, Tamil Nadu on December 9, Thursday, following his social media post where he remarked on the Coonoor chopper crash in which the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 13 others were killed on Wednesday. In the tweet, which he later deleted, Maridhas asked if Tamil Nadu was "turning into a Kashmir" under the DMK rule. In the tweet, seeming to insinuate foul play in Wednesday's tragedy, he claimed that there were chances of a conspiracy to be formed when people disloyal to the country were to come together and said separatist forces had to be stopped.
Madurai police went to Maridhas' house in Surya Nagar of K Pudur to question him, but members of the BJP gathered at the spot and refused to allow police to detain him. Eventually, police, with some difficulty, took him to the K Pudur police station, where again BJP cadres staged a protest. Deputy Commissioners TK Rajasekaran and Thangadurai were at the spot to manage the chaos. Maridhas was booked by the cyber crime police under Sections 153 (a), 504, 505 (ii), 505 (i)(b) of the IPC.An Indian Air Force Mi-17V5 helicopter carrying Rawat and the 13 others had crashed near Coonoor town in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district on Wednesday. The chopper, which took off from the Sulur air base, was on its way to the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington. The Indian Air Force has ordered an inquiry into the helicopter crash. The flight data recorder of the helicopter has been recovered. On Thursday, the bodies of Rawat and other deceased persons were brought to the Palam airforce base in Delhi.