By Mohammed Irshad / The Wire
Mangaluru: A 19-year-old Muslim man succumbed to his injuries in Karnataka’s Mangaluru on Thursday, July 21, two days after he was allegedly assaulted by members of a rightwing Hindutva outfit.
Masud, a painter by profession, and originally from Kerala had been staying at his grandmother’s house in Kelanje village of Karnataka for the last month. He has four siblings in Kerala. His father is no more.
Police have registered a case and arrested eight people, all of whom are members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Bajrang Dal. They have been identified as Sudhir, Sunil Kelanje, Abhilash Bellare, Jim Ranjith, Shivaprasad, Bhaskar, Ranjith, Sadashiva.
Posts circulating on social media have identified Abhilash Bellare as the Akhada Pramukh of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Bajrang Dal’s Valmikhi Shakha at Bellare, Sunil Kelanje as the ‘Gau Raksha’ Pramukh of the same outfit, and Ranjith as its Suraksha Pramukh. The Wire has not been able to confirm whether the three held these positions but has confirmed that all eight were indeed members of the rightwing outfit. The two organisations, VHP and Bajrang Dal, are understood to function as a single composite unit in the area.
Of the eight accused, Bellare, Ranjith and Kelanje have criminal history. Four out of the eight had been charged under section 107 (imposed on wilful offenders) during July 9-10, the weekend of Eid ul-Adha, in a different case.
A week before Eid, Masud had purchased a three-month-old calf, said 24-year-old Shanif, Masud’s friend since childhood. Upon having been tipped off, police visited their house to inquire into whether Masud intended to slaughter it. Masud, in fact, wanted to rear the cow, says his friend.
“Since then, Masud had been saying that his neighbour Sudhir had been giving him hostile stares and has attempted to intimidate him by keeping a watch on him whenever he took the calf out for grazing. He had told this to me and I had suggested that he ignore it and try to avoid contact with him,” said Shanif, who works in Bengaluru and had gone to Kelanje for Eid.
On July 19, Sudhir and Masud had a heated argument, in the course of which they both physically assaulted each other. Hours later, Sudhir lured Masud to a secluded spot in the village and severely beat him up along with seven others.
This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here