The Tamil directors broke their silence days after Tamil Nadu Police formed an all-women SIT and sidelined three officers accused of botching the investigation.
Vetrimaaran and Ameer put out a joint statement on Sunday calling for a thorough, unimpeded investigation into the case against Gem Granites chairman R Veeramani, who stands accused of sexually abusing minor girls. The two directors called the alleged crimes "shocking" and "unforgivable" and said anyone who tried to shield Veeramani should be investigated and punished just as severely.
It's their first public comment on a case that's been running since October 2025, and it comes only three days after the state constituted a fresh Special Investigation Team to take over the probe.
The case itself has had a rough run through the system. It began when a child rights volunteer walked into a Chennai police station with a pen drive. The footage on it, carrying what's reported to be a 2019 CCTV timestamp, purportedly showed a minor girl being sexually assaulted, and the volunteer alleged the man in the video was Veeramani. Police registered an FIR on October 7, 2025.
Then, in February this year, the investigating team tried to close the file. Their reasoning was that they couldn't identify or locate the girl and didn't have enough evidence to proceed. The Special POCSO Court wasn't having it. It rejected the closure report outright and ordered the police back to work.
A new team, and three officers out
That order eventually led to last week's shake-up. On September 24, Tamil Nadu Police set up a four-member SIT made up entirely of women, led by Additional Commissioner of Police PC Thenmozhi, with Joint Commissioner Disha Mittal and Superintendents of Police J Mutharasi and VV Geethanjali rounding out the team.
The same day, two senior officers, A Arun and N Kannan, were placed on compulsory wait, and Assistant Commissioner MA Yasmin was moved to the Chief Office Vacancy Reserve. All three moves were tied to what officials described as lapses in the original investigation, though nobody has spelled out exactly what those lapses were.
Vetrimaaran and Ameer's statement leans on that context. They want the SIT to work without political or corporate pressure, and they've asked for legal aid, counselling and rehabilitation for the survivors, while insisting their identities stay protected.
The directors also pushed back on the criticism that's been building around their long silence on the case. "Whoever commits sexual offences, our voice will always be raised against them," they said, adding that they want stringent punishment for sexual offenders, no exceptions made.
None of this settles anything about Veeramani's guilt or innocence, that's still for the SIT and the courts to determine. What it does confirm is that the case, more than eleven months after that pen drive first landed with police, is nowhere near closed. The SIT hasn't set a timeline for its findings, and the POCSO court will be watching for whether this investigation fares any better than the last one.
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