‘I wish it were the same treatment with everyone’: Vishal backs Udhayanidhi Stalin's detention

Tamil actor Vishal has thrown his weight behind the recent detention of Tamil Nadu Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin, who was picked up by police over controversial remarks about actor Trisha Krishnan, but with a pointed condition attached.

Speaking to ANI on Saturday, Vishal said political flare-ups of this kind aren't new, but argued the punishment shouldn't stop with one politician.

He said such treatment ought to be extended to everyone in the industry's orbit who disrespects women, singling out YouTube creators and social media users who routinely troll and demean actresses online.

His larger point was the law shouldn't apply selectively, and those "hitting below the belt" at women in the film fraternity deserve the same consequences Udhayanidhi faced.

What actually happened to Udhayanidhi

Udhayanidhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, was detained and questioned for roughly an hour at the Sengipatti Police Station in Thanjavur before being released.

The trigger was a Cauvery rights protest where, as the crowd began chanting "Trisha, Trisha," he responded with a remark widely read as a double entendre before clarifying he meant the Cauvery river's water, not the actor.

The backlash was swift. The women's wing of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) filed a police complaint accusing him of targeting Trisha with the comment. The DMK has pushed back hard, insisting his words were about governance and were twisted out of context.

Trisha's silence, and a bigger political storm

Trisha herself, who has shared a two-decade-long working relationship with new Tamil Nadu CM Vijay has stayed completely silent on the row, declining to weigh in either way.

That hasn't stopped the episode from snowballing into a full-blown political slugfest, with camps split between those calling the detention justified accountability and others dismissing it as TVK's political vendetta against the DMK.

Vishal’s intervention has widened the debate, taking it beyond a DMK-versus-TVK battle and raising a more basic question about whether everyone should be held to the same standard when speaking about women.