8 detained for assaulting minority youth for travelling with Hindu girl

Mangaluru: Eight persons were taken into custody on Friday in connection with an assault on a 24-year-old man in Mangaluru on Thursday. The youth belonging to a minority community was travelling with a young woman from another religion on a bus when he was beaten and stabbed.

Addressing reporters in Mangaluru on Friday, city Police Commissioner N Shashi Kumar said, "On Mangaluru city outskirts yesterday, around 9:30 pm, a bus was stopped and a boy and girl who are classmates and friends, belonging to different religions, were made to get down from the bus. The boy was beaten up and the girl was also injured when she tried to protect her friend. The injured youth was admitted to a private hospital."

The Police chief said an inquiry is in progress into the incident and the police have detained eight people. A case has also been registered. According to the reports, a case of attempt to murder has been registered against the accused men. Special teams have been formed headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police. The police are also investigating to find out who shared information about the two young people from different religions travelling together on the bus.

"The four men came in a car and stopped the bus. The boy was beaten and also suffered a stab injury near his hip. Four others from Bajrang Dal who were involved will soon be arrested" said police sources.

The police said the young woman was travelling to Bengaluru and that her classmate was with her in a private bus to help her as he was more familiar with the city. "They were classmates and the girl told us she had known the boy for many years," police sources claimed.

Dakshina Kannada district in coastal Karnataka has seen incidents of communal tension in the past. In the last two years, the district recorded three to four such moral policing incidents.

An increasing number of cases of religious intolerance have been reported since a renewed push by members of the BJP, which governs at the Centre and in Karnataka, for laws against "love jihad" - the right-wing conspiracy theory of Muslim men seducing Hindu women to have them converted to Islam.