Four youths held for assaulting Basheer in Mangaluru of Karnataka

Four youths have been arrested in connection with Wednesday night’s attack on Abdul Basheer (47), who runs an eatery, at Kottara Chowki in the city.

MANGALURU: Four youths have been arrested in connection with Wednesday night’s attack on Abdul Basheer (47), who runs an eatery, at Kottara Chowki in the city. The arrested — Srijith P K (25) from Kasaragod, Kishan Poojary (21) and Dhanush Poojary (22), both from Padil, Mangaluru, and Sandesh Kotyan (22) from Manjeshwar, Kasargod, attacked Basheer allegedly in retaliation to Bajrang Dal activist Deepak Rao’s murder that took place the same afternoon, Police Commissioner T R Suresh told reporters here on Saturday.

He said all the four are friends and are facing various criminal charges like attempt-to-murder, outraging the modesty of a woman, extortion and robbery. They claimed to be previously associated with some Hindu right-wing outfits, which is being verified. Kishan Poojary was out on bail in a stabbing case at Adyar in retaliation to RSS worker Sharath Madivala’s murder in August this year, he said.  

The Police chief said they were participating in a ‘Garadi Jatre’, a religious fair, at Kankanadi in the city when they came to know about Deepak’s murder and decided to retaliate. They wanted to target someone from a particular community when Basheer came to their mind as they used to eat at the eatery run by him.

Basheer was attacked with weapons when he was going home after closing the eatery. Suresh said a team, led by CCRB ACP Valentine D’Souza, will further investigate to ascertain if there are any other motives behind the attack.  

The top cop said the condition of Basheer is stable and added that an internal inquiry has been ordered to look into the leak of the CCTV footage of the attack on Basheer. 

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