By IANS,
Chennai : Valentine’s Day passed off peacefully in Tamil Nadu, thanks to strict vigil against protesters, police said here Saturday.
Thirty odd right-wing activists belonging to Hanumant Sena, Shiv Sena and other fringe outfits were briefly detained in four cities including Madurai, Coimbatore and Chennai, police sources said.
Chennai Police Commissioner K. Radhakrishnan told reporters that his men were under orders to allow peaceful protests but would prevent any violence.
“The inalienable democratic right to express opposition will be allowed but attempts to indulge in violence will be firmly curbed by my men,” Radhakrishnan said.
Threats from small organisations to “forcibly marry” lovers publicly professing love did not fructify, official sources said.
A four-km jog on the seafront by hundreds of youths and middle-aged persons underlining the need for love and eschewing hate was one of the highlights of the day here.
Young people thronged most restaurants and public places unhindered, exchanging cards or simply hanging out.
Police pickets were seen in all vulnerable points, eyewitnesses said.
“The world should realise that all creation emanates from love and that hate is an abominable crime,” Meenalochani Viswakumaran, a teenaged college student, told IANS as she walked holding her boyfriend P.S. Veeraraghavan by the hand on the Marina Beach here.
In Kanyakumari, 700 km south of here, 30 volunteers of a fringe Hindu group carried out a marriage ceremony for dogs to register their opposition to Valentine’s Day, saying the festival denoted “base instincts openly exhibited only by animals”.