The Karnataka Congress on Monday tweeted a collage of pictures showing the prime accused in Friday night’s lynching of a Muslim cattle trader, by alleged cow vigilantes, with several senior state and national BJP leaders, including state home minister Araga Jnanendra.
The photographs show Puneeth Kerehalli, head of the Rashtra Rakshana Pade (Nation Protection Army), who police sources say is a well-known cow vigilante, with Jnanendra, BJP national general secretary C.T. Ravi, Lok Sabha member and BJP youth icon Tejasvi Surya, state energy minister V. Sunil Kumar, Lok Sabha member Pratap Simha and some other party functionaries.
Puneeth and four unnamed others have been booked on the charge of murdering Idrees Pasha, 38, at Sathanur village in Ramanagara district, about 150km from Bangalore. All five accused are in hiding. The police have formed two teams to trace them. The BJP had till evening not reacted officially to the Congress charge of links with Puneeth.
A senior BJP leader said Puneeth “has nothing to do with the party” and stressed that “there is nothing unusual in political leaders posing for pictures with members of the general public”. Pasha’s lynching comes a month after state animal husbandry minister Prabhu Chavan had declared that the May 10 Assembly elections were “a battle between cow protectors and cow slaughterers”.
State Congress president D.K. Shivakumar, whose Assembly constituency of Kanakapura includes Sathanur, has demanded the resignation of home minister Jnanendra, the immediate arrest of the accused, and compensation of Rs 25 lakh to Pasha’s family.
“(Chief minister) Basavaraj Bommai is responsible for this. He has encouraged it. We had raised our voice when he made that statement on moral policing,” Shivakumar told a news conference, where he held up pictures of Puneeth with BJP leaders that his party had earlier tweeted. Bommai had in 2021 justified a surge in acts of moral policing — mainly the harassment of interfaith couples at public places — by saying: “Action and reaction are bound to happen if sentiments are hurt.”
Asked about the BJP’s silence on the pictures, a party source said all the senior leaders were busy finalising the candidates’ list, which would be sent to Delhi in a couple of days. Puneeth’s Facebook page has a video, posted on March 18, of what appears an act of cow vigilantism. It shows a mini-truck laden with cattle, its rear hatch open.
The cattle are tied to one another and to the vehicle itself. Puneeth unties the cattle, which are later seen at a cattle shelter. Pasha and two companions were travelling in a mini-truck with 16 heads of cattle when the five accused allegedly stopped them at Sathanur late on Friday night and attacked them, telling them to “go to Pakistan”.
The companions — Syed Zaheer, 38, and Irfan, 37 — say they somehow managed to run away. Pasha’s body was found on Saturday morning on a roadside in Sathanur. Former chief minister and Janata Dal Secular leader H.D. Kumaraswamy tweeted in Kannada: “If he was transporting cattle illegally, he could have been caught and handed over to the police or information could have been provided (to the police). What is the meaning of this murder?” He added: “Anyone can understand the conspiracy behind this during election time.”
Kumaraswamy slammed the police’s inaction while cow vigilantes ran amok in the state. “These people masquerading as cow protectors do not care for the cows on the streets, which have neither food nor shelter. But their objective is to keep the fire of caste and religion burning. Is the police system fast asleep?” Hundreds of Muslims carried Pasha’s body in a funeral procession in his native Mandya town on Sunday.
Pasha and his companions, all from Mandya district neighbouring Ramanagara, had bought the cattle from Shivapura in Mandya and were transporting them to Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu when they were intercepted and attacked. The FIR, registered with Sathanur police station, mentions the charges of murder, wrongful restraint and intentional insult to provoke breach of peace.
