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K’taka: Retaliatory murders leave police worried
Serving and retired police officers in the state say while political murders were not new to the state, a series of revenge killing over politics and ideology in recent years is a matter of concern, especially the trend of “random selection of targets”.
Karnataka has witnessed 120 murders for political reasons since 2000, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Out of the 120 political murders, 22 were reported since 2018.
Serving and retired police officers in the state say while political murders were not new to the state, a series of revenge killing over politics and ideology in recent years is a matter of concern, especially the trend of “random selection of targets”.
For the police, these murders pose a new threat. A problem of lack of intelligence. “The government’s reaction to the recent murders was to create a commando unit. We still don’t know what such murders will do. There is a political environment where we are forced to clap section 144 in several parts of the state because of political murders and tension. We are blamed when such things happen, but the solution for the problem is political,” said an ADGP rank officer, who didn’t want to be named.
The law and orders situation in the communally-sensitive Dakshina Kannada district has a concern for authorities following three back-to-back murders in 10 days. It was the murder of a Muslim man in regard to an agreement over a calf that triggered the series of murders. Masood, 19, a daily-wage earner from Kasaragod in Kerala, who was staying with his grandfather in Bellare, was murdered by a group of men on July 20.
A senior police officer, who was part of the probe into the Praveen Nettaru murder case, said Masood was harassed by one of the accused over a calf. The continuous verbal harassment eventually resulted in the altercation, and eventually the murder.
Within six days of the murder, Nettaru (32), a BJP youth wing leader, was hacked to death by unidentified motorbike-borne assailants on July 26 night at Bellare. A police officer, who was part of the investigation, told HT that the gang had identified a list of three targets from which Nettaru was selected.
One of the reasons for selecting Praveen as a target was that he was popular following his political works during the anti-halal campaign. “From the investigation so far, we found they have identified three targets. The attack was retaliation to the murder of Masood. Their requirement for selecting the target was that he should be a local, and a prominent leader in the local politics,” the officer said.
Just two days after Nettaru’s murder, 23-year-old Mohammed Fazil was hacked to death in Surathkal. Police said a probe into the case so far has revealed that the attack was a relation to the killing of Netarru.
Six people were arrested in connection with the murder of Fazil. “Except for the one person in the group others didn’t know who Fazil was,” said a senior officer speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“The disturbing detail that stands out in these cases is that the victims were not related. They were killed in retaliation. In the Fazil case, the accused said they wanted to kill ‘someone’. We have seen murders in the state, even political murders, in the investigation there was always a common pattern. In revenge killing, there would be a past reason for it (the murder). But, random killings are a disturbing trend,” he said.
The political murders in the state were not limited just to the coastal regions. Rekha Kadiresh, the 45-year-old former corporator, was hacked to death on June 24 in 2018. From the investigation that followed police found that a plan was made by the accused after they felt Rekha was sidelining them within the party work.
“Her husband S Kadiresh had a criminal past. It was a gang rivalry that caused his life in 2018. Peter was his righthand man before Kadiresh decided to enter politics. Realising that their criminal past would not help them win an election, he made his wife contest the election. Even during this time, Peter was a close ally of Kadiresh. Following this murder, even though Peter remained with the Kadiresh family, Rekha wanted to move past the criminal past of her husband. She began to keep Peter and other associates away from her political activity, which irked Peter,” said the officer.
The officer said instances like these where jealousy and rivalry result in murder within the same political camps or among enemies that were not new to the state. But, murders over ideology are not a new trend in the state either.
Even though Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada district has a population of fewer than 150,000 people, every intelligence agency, state or central, has its units deployed in the town. The reason is the name itself. Outside of Karnataka, more than the town, the word Bhatkal triggers memories of Yasin and Riyaz Bhatkal, two masterminds behind multiple terror attacks in the country.
Decades before these men emerged and the town came under the radar of intelligence agencies, Bhatkal was an inconspicuous fishermen’s town, which remained peaceful following the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
GU Bhat, a senior journalist from Uttara Kannada district, remembers the events of April 10, 1996, which he believes was a turning point in the town’s history. On that day, Dr DU Chittaranjan, a popular doctor in the town and an RSS activist, was assassinated by unknown men inside his house.
“Before having dinner, he watched the news. Just as he got up from his seat after his wife called him for dinner, someone shot him from behind through the window. He died on the spot. It was this murder that divided the Muslim and Hindu communities in the town,” said Bhat, who had covered the story.
Chittaranjan was sent to Bhatkal to build an RSS base in the town. He was popular in the town for charging his patients just ₹5 or less. His popularity laid the foundation of the party in Bhatkal, which had elected only Muslim candidates from the constituency until the late 1990s. The murder resulted in the coastal region being a communally sensitive area in the years that followed.
As the Hindutva wave got momentum across Uttara Kannada district, resistance grew within the Muslim community. “Since the mid-1980s, there were many Muslim men from Bhatkal who moved to Gulf countries, and over the years, the community became rich,” said a senior state intelligence officer.
While the Hindutva movement gained traction and power in Bhatkal, youth employed in Gulf countries became the backbone of resistance against the movement. The Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bhatkal soon witnessed the influence of international players, who tried to support the resistance against the rise of Hindutva.
In post-2014 Karnataka, where BJP was political mileage in the state, the political murders were a key election issue for the BJP, which was used to gather support. On October 16, 2016, Rudesh, an RSS worker, who he was returning after attending a Vijayadashami event in Bengaluru was hacked to death. Police arrested Popular Front of India (PFI) workers Asim Sharif, Mohammed Muzeeb Ulla, Wasim Ahmed, Irfan Pasha, and Mohammed Sadiq workers in the case.
The BJP leaders took up the matter as a failure of the Congress government and started a campaign ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections. BJP member of parliament Shobha Karandlaje wrote a letter to the Union home ministry in October 2017 alleging that 23 “Hindu activists” had been murdered by “jihadi elements” in Karnataka since 2014.
Listing their names, she claimed that the needle of suspicion pointed at Muslim organisations and accused the Congress government in the state of protecting them. Subsequently, it was found that these numbers were exaggerated. Out of the 23 names on Karandlaje’s list, one man was found alive, the families of two men said they had committed suicide and the police investigation found that two men had allegedly been murdered by their sisters. “There could be some mistakes in the list but she made a compelling argument. The murder of Prashant Poojari took place in a public place. He was murdered because he was an RSS worker. Then Congress government ignored her, but people voted Congress out of power. So, they realised what had happened,” said Pradeep Shenoy, an RSS officer bearer in Mangaluru said.
On October 9, 2015, Prashanth Poojary, a Hindu man from the town of Moodabidri in Dakshina Kannada was killed by PFI workers.
Poojary, a 29-year-old flower seller and a member of Bajrang Dal, was stabbed with blades by six assailants at about 7.00 am ten people have been arrested in connection with the attack, allegedly motivated by Poojary’s activism against the illegal slaughter of cows. The murder had helped the Sangh Parivar organisations to mobilise cadre in the coastal region.
But the murder also marked the trend of retaliatory killings. In November 2016, Mustafa Kavoor, 29, an undertrial in this murder case, was stabbed to death at the central jail in Mysuru by another prisoner. Kiran Shetty, 29, repeatedly stabbed Mohammed Mustafaa with a sharpened spoon, post lunch. A police officer said Kiran smuggled the spoon from the jail kitchen about two days ago and turned it into a lethal weapon by sharpening it against the ground.
Similarly, a group of men brutally attacked 32-year-old Imtiyaz, who was accused in the Poojary murder case with a machete at his restaurant.
Home minister Araga Jnanendra accused the Congress of creating a culture of political murders in the state. He said the previous governments did not register all cases and politicians encouraged organisations like the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) that have extreme religious views. “Siddaramaiah even withdrew cases against around 2,000 members belonging to various organisations, which emboldened such people. Our government is registering all cases and is committed to taking all of them to a logical end,” he said.
Siddaramaiah said the political murders are a sign of a breakdown of law and order and asserted that the chief minister and home minister should resign. “They should leave it to others if they cannot govern the state. These political killings are proof that people are not safe in the state,” he said.
