MANGALURU: A day after two people were killed in police firing following protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), Mangaluru wore a deserted look as an uneasy calm prevailed across the city. Except for a few incidents of stone-throwing on buses, no untoward incidents were reported on Friday.
The curfew, which was clamped on city on Thursday evening, was relaxed for two hours on Friday afternoon to allow people to offer prayers. However, not many came out of their houses and attendance was thin in mosques. Mobile internet services have been suspended in the entire Dakshina Kannada district.
Nausheen and Abdul Jaleel, who were killed on Thursday, were laid to rest in Kudroli and Bunder, respectively, amid tight police security. Earlier, the bodies were taken from Highland Hospital to Wenlock District Hospital for post-mortem and then to Al-Ahsan Masjid in Vas Lane where a prayer service was held. Prominent personalities of the community, including MLA B M Farooq were present. Congress leaders Ramanath Rai, Ivan D’souza, U T Khader and J R Lobo were present at the funeral of Abdul Jaleel.
A delegation of Congress leaders comprising former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar, M B Patil, S R Patil, Basavaraja Rayareddy and others, who arrived from Bengaluru to meet the families of the deceased, were stopped at Mangaluru airport.Meanwhile, ADGP Dayananda arrived in the city on Friday to monitor the security arrangements. He held several rounds of meetings with top officials.
We did not want to take chances: M’luru top cop
However, the Kerala CM’s letter did not help the journalists much, as they were confined to a police van till evening before they were taken to Kasargod police station and freed. It is alleged that the TV journalists from prominent Kerala news channels were not even provided drinking water all through the time they were detained.
A video, which has since gone viral, shows Mangaluru City Police Commissioner P S Harsha stopping a TV journalist who was reporting live from Wenlock district hospital where people injured in violence are admitted. Though the reporter showed him his identity card, the top cop was not convinced and insisted that the journalist furnish his accreditation card issued by the government. Soon, the reporters were bundled in a police van. The cops took away their cell phones and cameras and local reporters were also not allowed to meet them.
In his defence, the police commissioner said he was only doing his duty. “Since there was curfew in the region, we did not want to take chances. The journalists were strangers to the city,” he said. Shockingly, earlier in the day, the top cop had told local media that a group of 50 persons from Kerala were arrested when they tried to enter Wenlock Hospital posing as journalists and some of them even possessed lethal weapons. When asked about the same at his evening press conference, he refused to comment on it.
Journalists in Kasargod, Kerala, staged a protest condemning the action of the Mangaluru police. A journalist with an English daily in Kasargod said, journalists from outside the state routinely report major incidents. “Journalists from Karnataka reported the Sabarimala issue from ground zero. They were no sent back, though most of the reports went against the Kerala government. So, stopping Kerala journalists from reporting in Mangaluru is highly condemnable,” he said.He said they can’t be stopped from reporting just because they did not have government accreditation. “They had valid identity cards issued by media houses.”