Mangalore city has witnessed two attacks by suspected Bajrang Dal men on Muslim youths for allegedly romancing Hindu women, at a time when a Karnataka minister has fanned the “love jihad” fire by speaking of a possible law against it.
Police said four Bajrang Dal workers had been arrested after they dragged a Muslim employee out of the jewellery store he worked in and beat him up on Tuesday, accusing him of engaging in “love jihad” with a Hindu colleague.
“Love jihad” refers to an alleged trend of Muslim youths “luring” Hindu women into romance and marriage in order to convert and radicalise them.
The four accused — Shibin, Chetan, Prakash and Ganesh — had apparently brought along a local policeman and the woman employee’s parents, who watched the assault.
No action has been taken against the policeman. Apparently, someone had “tipped off” the assaulters about the Muslim youth “constantly chatting up” the Hindu woman who had been recruited just a few weeks ago.
The arrests were made on Sunday — five days after the incident — on a complaint from the victim. On Saturday, suspected Bajrang Dal activists thrashed two Muslim youths for “roaming around” with two Hindu girls in Mangalore city late in the night.
The girls, who are sisters and Class XII students at an evening college, apparently planned to eat out with the two youths.
A passing police patrol spotted the incident and stopped the assault. No case has been lodged against the attackers.
On Sunday, state home minister Araga Jnanendra said the government would direct the police to apply provisions of the anti-conversion law in cases of “love jihad”. He added that the state government might examine whether a separate law was necessary to handle “love jihad”.
His comments came after a Sangh parivar outfit, the Hindu Janajagruti Samithi, gave him a memorandum seeking a special task force to stop Hindu women being “lured” by Muslim men.
Mohammed Kunji, state secretary of clerics’ body Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Karnataka, attributed the spike in vigilante violence to the upcoming Assembly polls, due next summer.
“As we all know, coastal Karnataka has long been a communal hotspot. I’m sure the sudden spurt in these cases is to further polarise society ahead of the state elections,” he told The Telegraph on Monday.
“While many such incidents are never reported, there is no effort to take even the reported cases to their logical end. But I won’t blame the police, since the political establishment doesn’t allow them to function properly in cases where Sangh parivar organisations are involved.”
In similar vigilante action, a group of Muslim men roughed up a group of young men and women from both the Hindu and Muslim communities on December 5 for watching the Kannada movie Kantara together at a Mangalore cinema.