MANGALURU: Mangaluru City Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal on Thursday said that they are yet to obtain any evidence or proper eyewitness testimony to determine what triggered the mob lynching at Kudupu. He added that another accused was secured from Gokak on Thursday morning.
Speaking to reporters in the city, Commissioner Agrawal said, "We do not have any proper eyewitnesses in the case to establish what triggered the assault. The accused and the eyewitnesses have claimed that they saw a person, Sachin—who is the main accused—beating up a man. They did not know why he was assaulting the man but joined in to support their friend."
So far, 20 persons have been arrested in connection with the case. "Another person named Anil was secured on Thursday morning from Gokak, taking the tally to 21. Our teams are continuing to search for the absconding accused. We have issued notices to 15 more persons who were present during the incident, asking them to appear for questioning. We are verifying CCTV footage from the area and questioning eyewitnesses about other individuals involved in the attack," he added.
Responding to questions about lapses on the part of local officers, the Police Commissioner said, "On April 27, Mangaluru Rural Police received information about a body—identified as Ashraf—lying near a temple at Kudupu. A case of Unnatural Death (UDR) was registered initially.
Later, our officials visited the spot and learned that a cricket match was taking place and a person was assaulted around the same time.
Although the local police had information about the assault, they failed to bring it to our notice. As a result, the case, which should have been directly registered as a murder, was initially treated as a suspicious death.
Consequently, we have suspended a police inspector and two constables for negligence in duty," he said.