The Hindu
Mangalore, Dec 3: President of the State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party and MP, D V Sadananda Gowda on Saturday sought a high-level inquiry into the murder of BJP leader of Mulky, Sukhananda Shetty, and the violence that followed on Friday.
Addressing presspersons along with party MLAs and district in-charge minister B Nagaraj Shetty here, Gowda said some "unseen hands" were working to create an unholy atmosphere in the district. He alleged that police were going soft on these elements.
Accusing the police of negligence and opening unwarranted fire, Gowda said Prem Chitrapu, who was killed in the firing died on the spot of a bullet fired from a police rifle. In law and order situations, the objective of firing should be to immobilise the person and take him into custody and not killing, he said.
In the case of Dinesh, who was also killed, the bullet had caused damage to his lungs, which meant that police have been firing haphazardly at the crowd, Gowda alleged.
Suratkal MLA Krishna J Palemar said the jeep that carried the body was not spared in the police firing as its windshield had bullet holes.
He said that the police were aware that this was the third attack on Sukhananda Shetty.
He recalled that Inspector of Mulky Police Station Venkatesh Prasanna had arrested three persons after the first attack on Shetty at Mulky, but soon after the Inspector was transferred and the three arrested persons were allowed to go free.
Palemar said in yet another retrograde step, the district police had disbanded the anti-rowdy squad. All these had convinced him and his party MLAs to press for change of the police set up in the district, he said.
When asked about the necessity of a taking Shetty's body in a procession, Gowda accused the police of delay in giving the permission to take the body to Mulky.
He said there were no plans to take out a procession but Shetty was so popular that a large gathering of friends, relatives and sympathizers had followed the body in a convoy of vehicles.
Gowda hastened to assert that the violence was an isolated incident and refused to equate the situation with the communal riots that broke out in Mangalore in October.
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