A stabbing suspect has been shot in the leg. Male pillion riders aged below 40 have been banned till Thursday 10pm. All educational establishments have been closed for three days and university examinations postponed.
The reason: Strife over the installation of hoardings with pictures of V.D. Savarkar in Muslim neighbourhoods on the 75th anniversary of independence.
The place: Shimoga in Karnataka, the BJP-ruled state that houses India’s Silicon Valley as well as an undeclared laboratory for polarisation formulae.
Fresh tension has been brewing at a time hardline Hindu as well as Muslim groups are suspected to have carried out a series of killings elsewhere in Karnataka, where Assembly elections are due next year.
A day after Independence Day, police in Shimoga city in central Karnataka fired at the right leg of a person who is suspected to have stabbed and wounded two persons a day earlier following the installation of a Savarkar hoarding at Ameer Ahmed Circle, a busy area in the old town.
An incapacitated Zabiullah, who the police accused of firing at cops after being cornered, was arrested and sent to the jail ward of the district hospital.
Two of his alleged accomplices, Nadeem and Abdul Rehman, had been arrested on Monday.
BJP hardliner and former minister K.S. Eshwarappa on Tuesday warned “goons among Muslims” to be prepared to face strict action. “The police action so far is just a sample. I am not saying all Muslims are goons, but the goons in the community be warned. The good Muslims should advise these people to refrain from taking law into their hands,” said the MLA from Shimoga.
In the same district on Tuesday, a Hindu Right-wing activist named Sunil Kumar was attacked. Bhadravati tahsildar Pradeep Kumar told reporters that the police were yet to confirm if the assault was linked to the communal tension in Shimoga city.
The BJP pocket borough of Shimoga had witnessed clashes between two groups on Monday after Muslims removed the hoarding of Savarkar from Ameer Ahmed Circle. The hoarding was allegedly placed there by a Hindu group. The Muslim group tried to put up a hoarding of Tipu Sultan instead.
This led to clashes in which two men identified as Prem Singh, 25, a Rajasthani worker, and Praveen 27, who runs a shop in the area, were stabbed. They are under medical care at a local hospital.
After a police team that rushed to the spot dispersed the crowd, a Hindu group staged a protest demanding they be allowed to place Savarkar’s picture back at the circle. But the police refused permission, considering the tense situation in the area.
The district administration then declared prohibitory orders in Shimoga city and Bhadravati until 10pm on August 18.
Additional director-general of police Alok Kumar told reporters that they had seized knives from rival groups and were keeping a watch on the area.
“We have seized several weapons and are investigating where they got them from. We will take all those arrested into custody for interrogation,” he said.
At Suratkal town in Dakshina Kannada district on Independence Day, another hoarding with Savarkar’s picture came up, unofficially renaming a busy intersection on the Mangalore-Udupi highway after him. Local authorities removed the hoarding after the Muslim Right-wing Social Democratic Party of India raised objections.
Shimoga had been rocked by protests and violence after Bajrang Dal activist Harsha, 27, was hacked to death in February this year.
Communal tension has been on the rise in pockets of Karnataka over the past few days. Yuva Morcha worker Praveen Nettaru, 31, was hacked to death outside his poultry shop at Bellare in Dakshina Kannada district in an apparent retaliation to the fatal assault on an 18-year-old house painter named Masud in the same district.
A daily wage worker named Mohammed Fazil, 23, was the third victim in the series of killings over nine days. Several suspects have been arrested in all three cases.
