Periyar statue beheaded near Pudukkottai in TN

The accused who targetted the Periyar statue around 9 pm were both drunk, one of them was a BJP member and another a CPI worker, say reports.

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday blamed the BJP-RSS for the beheading of a statue of Dravidian icon and social reformer EVR Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, in Tamil Nadu's Pudukkottai district.

News agency ANI reported that the Periyar statue was being reinstated in Pudukkottai.

Last week, a statue of Syama Prasad Mukherjee was found vandalised in Assam's Kokrajhar and another of Jawaharlal Nehru - the first prime minister of India - was damaged with black ink in Katwa's Telephone Maidan in West Bengal. A large number of police men were deployed to prevent any backlash.

The police have filed a case against unknown culprits and an investigation is underway. Police said some miscreants damaged the statue on Monday night. Seven people were also arrested in connection with the incident.

The fourth attack on a statue in the state comes on the same day the Ram Rajya Rath Yatra enters into the state of Tamil Nadu.

The incident follows multiple instances of statue vandalisation across the country after Communist hero Lenin's statue was razed in Tripura by BJP supporters after party's historic win in the assembly polls.

The statue was installed near the Panchayat office in 2013.