The hartal organised by the BJP in protest against the murder of the ABVP worker, Sachin Gopal, affected normal life in the district here on Thursday.
Educational institutions, government offices and commercial establishments didn’t function in many parts of the district. Vehicles were exempted from the hartal, but most of the private buses kept off the roads. Only a few taxis and autorickshaws were available for service. The attendance at government offices, including those at the Civil station here, was thin.
Except for a few medical shops, none of the shops remained open. A group of supporters of the hartal smashed the main entrance of the LIC office here. The hartal was free of major incidents of violence. Hartal was total in most places around the district. It was on July 6 that Sachin Gopal was stabbed by an alleged group of Campus Front activists in front of the Pallikkunnu Higher Secondary School. He was admitted to a private hospital here and later taken to the KMC hospital Mangalore.
He succumbed to his injuries at the Mangalore hospital on Wednesday evening. The body of Sachin Gopal was received by the senior leaders of the BJP and the RSS, P K Krishna Das, P Gopalankutty Master and K K Balaram at Payyanur on Thursday evening. BJP state general secretary K Surendran, C P Suresh Babu, Sasidharan V and ABVP leaders M Aneeshkumar and Jithin Reghunath accompanied the procession carrying the body of the slain ABVP leader. The body was placed in front of the Pallikkunnu Higher secondary school for the public to pay homage, before being cremated at Payyambalam.