Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Six youths have been booked for assaulting a Muslim teenager in Bantwal taluk in the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka. The incident is yet another case of ‘moral policing’ as the victim, Mohammad Shakir, aged 19 from Mangalapadav in Veerakambha village, offered chocolate to one of the female students sitting in the bus, media reports said.
Shakir, a student of Yenepoya College at Balmatta in Mangaluru, offered candy to the Hindu girl sitting next to him when he was returning home in a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus on Friday evening.
The innocent act was observed by a few youths and when the bus reached Kelinja at Veerakambha, six persons — Chandrashekar, Prajwal, Rohith and three others — entered the bus and assaulted victim Shakir and got down from the bus.
Later, the victim got down at Pathratota and was admitted to a government hospital at Bantwal. The accused have been booked under Sections 147 for rioting, 143 (unlawful assembly) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code. Vitla police have registered a case.
