Bengaluru: At 8.45 pm on Tuesday a group of Muslim youth gathered at Pulakeshinagar MLA Akanda Shrinivasa Murthy’s residence, shouting slogans against a derogatory post by his nephew Naveen on Facebook. Within minutes a peaceful protest turned ugly and violent as the charged mob gate-crashed the legislator’s house, pelted stones and ransacked it before police swooped down and canned them.
Over the next three hours, all hell broke loose as over 5,000 mobsters descended on the streets of KG Halli. Violence broke out at three locations simultaneously—KG police station, Kaval Byrasandra and DG Halli. The mobsters, armed with sticks, machetes, petrol bombs went berserk, damaging property and torched over 100 vehicles parked on the roadside.
Scenes at KG Halli police station sent shivers down the spine of senior officials, as the violent mob ransacked the police station and set ablaze the DCP East’s official car. In self defence, the police started firing on the crowd to disperse them as they were shouting slogans to kill the cops. By around 2 am, the situation was brought under control with additional forces being deployed in the three areas.
It was mayhem-Wednesday to which Bengaluru woke up, with reports of two deaths in the firing and over 60 cops being injured in the melee. By 11 am, one more person succumbed to bullet injuries and by then over 40 persons were arrested for arson and rioting. Naveen, the accused who had posted the derogatory post too was arrested. By the end of the day, 145 rioters were arrested and FIR lodged against 19 persons, with three of the main accused belonging to Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), including its district convenor, Muzamil Pasha.
No sooner the SDPI’s name surfaced, the violence took political hues, with BJP national general secretary, B.L. Santosh attacking the Congress for its meek response to the attack on their party’s Dalit MLA. By then, D.K. Shivkumar, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president had given a measured and cautious response, calling strict action against the perpetrators of the violence. By Wednesday evening, over 200 mobsters were arrested using facial recognition software on the footages and videos of violence shared on social media.
It was only on Thursday that more details started to emerge. Congress corporator Irshad Begaum’s husband Kaleem, who was named as accused no. 7 in the FIR, came to light with his pictures taken with Congress bigwigs including Siddaramaiah and K.J. George. This only thickened the plot.
According to sources in the Home Department there were multiple reasons behind this violence.” One, the accused Naveen had political aspirations and wanted to make a name for himself by posturing as anti-Islamic with his posts. SDPI workers had complained to KG Halli police, who hadn’t taken it seriously, and the former were waiting for an opportunity to hit. Secondly, there are socio-religious-economic issues too at play here. Due to Covid-19 and lockdowns, many were either jobless, lost businesses and then there was the 5 August Ayodhya Ram temple shilanyas, which had not gone down well with this section. The frustration was flagrant and Naveen’s latest post on Monday was the tipping point,” the source said.
The initial protest and violence prima facie looks spontaneous as the local inspector was clueless. But what happened after an hour was a collected, premeditated and orchestrated and coordinated attack on police and public property. “How can over 5,000 people arrive at different locations armed with all the weapons? We have found video evidence of some people coming in bikes and distributing money. It seems that the turf war only acted as a catalyst and only amplified the violence. Tussle between Congress and SDPI, among Congress leaders, and vote bank politics are also some of the reasons. Several political leaders have their finger in this violence. Whatever be it, investigations are on and soon all the investigating angels and results will be out,” the source said.
Meanwhile, the BJP has taken the attack to Congress stating that for long the party blindly indulged in appeasement politics and now that SDPI is also in this competition it has turned bloody. “It was time to end this kind of mindless violence. The Congress is to be squarely blamed for this violence. Let the reports come from the investigators and we will sternly deal with the SDPI. Such outfits which endanger life and peace of society should be banned,” said Deputy Chief Minister Ashwathnarayan to The Sunday Guardian.
Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai also toed the same line, stating that state government will soon write to the Union government to ban the outfit.
Roshan Baig, former minister who was with the Congress until recently, joined the chorus: “Poor sections of minority communities should not be exploited by SDPI or Congress. Congress has been patronising SDPI for the past 10 yrs and then they could not protect their own MLA. Congress is to be blamed for this incident.”
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, D.K. Shivkumar said: “This is all a ploy by the BJP to deflect from the fact that the state home ministry failed in containing the violence in KG Halli and DG Halli. How can the BJP blame our corprators? Are they conducting the investigation? Let the agencies say so after a thorough investigation. It’s the BJP which is politicizing the matter. Where was the police for three hours? Did the government delay so that there should violence? We are not going to sit quiet. We are also looking into the matter as we have constituted a fact finding committee.”