KARNATAKA — A 35-year-old Muslim auto-rickshaw driver was allegedly assaulted by a group of eight men in the Hegde Nagar area of Bengaluru on Sunday, reportedly after he refused to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. While police have registered a case of assault, they have been accused of downplaying the incident’s alleged communal angle.
While the jurisdictional Sampigehalli police claimed that the victim had not mentioned anything about the slogan to them, the victim Waseem told The Hindu that not only did the assault happen after he refused to say Jai Shri Ram, but that he had also mentioned it to the police in his statement.
Waseem was driving his autorickshaw along with his friend Sameer, a mechanic, on Sunday. The duo stopped at a vacant site in Hegde Nagar to relieve themselves. The accused who were sitting and drinking nearby confronted them and asked their identity and why they stopped, The Hindu reported.
“While I was trying to reason with them, they realised I was a Muslim and started attacking me. They asked me to chant Jai Shri Ram, to which I refused. They got furious and started to punch and kick me,” Waseem told The Hindu.
Sensing trouble, Sameer fled the scene and Waseem was trapped. “There were around eight people and they started beating me severely. In fact, one of them showed some mercy and helped me escape by helping me to start the autorickshaw and flee from the scene,” Mr. Waseem recalled.
After reaching home, Mr. Waseem narrated his ordeal to his family members and on their advice, approached the police.
The Sampigehalli police sent Waseem to Yelahanka General Hospital for medical examination, before taking up a case of assault. The Sampigehalli police have registered a case for intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace, criminal intimidation, assault and wrongful restraint, with no mention of the communal undertones to the assault.
Zia Nomani, an activist associated with the Law and Policy Research Institute, Bengaluru, who helped Waseem file a complaint with the police, said that despite the complainant telling them that he was assaulted for not raising Jai Shri Ram slogan and even used religious slurs against him, the police were trying to dilute the case by not bringing on record the communal nature of the assault.
