BENGALURU: Deeming the August 11 violence in DG Halli a pre-planned, organised attack by Muslim mobs deliberately targeting Hindus, an independent citizens' forum on Friday submitted its report to Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa.
The report was put together by a fact-finding committee of 'Citizens for Democracy' led by Justice Sri. Srikanth Babaladi (Retd) District Judge, Madan Gopal IAS (Retd) and ten others including former civil servants and social activists. In their 49-page report, the citizens' forum has likened the DG Halli violence to riots in New Delhi earlier this year and Sweden.
"The mob has specifically targeted certain prominent Hindus in the area. Despite attempts being made to project the same as political rivalry, it was undoubtedly communally motivated. The committee is of the opinion that based on the kind of houses that have been attacked and people who have been targeted, the motive of the riots could also be fear-mongering so as to change the demography and turn the area into a Muslim majority one," said the report that accused the SDPI and PFI of planning and executing the incident.
In its report, the committee recommended that the state should not view the incident in isolation and that the funding received by individuals and religious extremist organisations who are involved in anti-social activities must be tracked and continuously monitored by involving the NIA.
The report also suggests that areas that have the potential to face such "communal tensions" should be identified in advance by the police to come up with plans to curb it. It also recommends evolving a mechanism to prevent and prosecute derogatory, abusive and hate content targeting any religion, race, class, organisation or sect of people.
Other members of the committee include Dr Prakash, IRS (Retd.), M N Krishnamurthy former DGP, Journalists R K Mattoo and Santhosh Thammaiah, who was arrested in 2018 for hate speech, Professors Dr M Jayappa and Dr H T Aravinda, social workers Muniraju and Jerome Anto and social worker and advocate Kshama Nargund.