TVK rally death: AIADMK hits out at Vijay's party with cryptic post on coffins

The AIADMK on Friday attacked Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief Vijay and his party with a cryptic post on X, hours after a man died of heatstroke at the actor-turned-politician's rally in Salem.

"Looks like to attend TVK rally in future one should carry his/her coffin," wrote AIADMK spokesperson, Kovai Sathyan, in the post, alongside the hashtag '#TVK_rallymurder'.

The controversial post also featured the Dancing Pallbearers, a Ghanaian group whose choreographed videos of dancing with a coffin went viral during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The man who died in the Salem rally has been identified as Siraj, a 37-year-old guest worker from Maharashtra, who had been living in Salem for about two decades.

Siraj had collapsed during the rally and was declared 'brought dead' at the hospital, the police said.

Notably, reports say he made silver rings and also worked in the construction field, and had been unwell for the past year. He has even undergone heart surgery in the past.

The cause of death, thought to be a heart attack, will be confirmed after the postmortem.

A change in tactics?

The AIADMK's responses to recent incidents concerning the TVK show a marked difference—from the Karur stampede to the Salem rally death.

In the wake of the Karur stampede, which killed 41 people and injured 100 others, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami turned his guns on the establishment, saying that the administration and the police failed to ensure proper facilities which had led to the tragedy.

"Had adequate security been provided, the tragic Karur incident could have been avoided," he had said, while speaking on a call attention motion in the Assembly.

The possible turning point? Weeks after the Karur incident, Palaniswami had even hinted at a Namakkal rally that Vijay's TVK would be joining forces with his party. However, those alliance hopes fell apart a while later.

Fast forward to February, and you have the AIADMK turning its guns on Vijay and his party after the alliance fallout, with not only Sathyan's cryptic post, but also a series of verbal barbs against the actor-politician, such as calling him a “Panaiyur pannaiyar uncle", and a “copy-paste leader” (for allegedly copying the style and speeches of Vijayakanth).

With inputs from Lakshmi Subramanian