Mohan Kuthar
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru
Updated
Mangaluru, Mar 15: Tension prevailed at Mudipu after Bajrang Dal activists indulged in moral policing and stopped a college bus in which students of first year BA and BCom were going for an education tour on the night of Saturday March 14.
The group of around 300 Bajrang Dal activists went on a rampage, pelting stones at the bus, allegedly because the boys and girls in the bus belonged to different communities.
Also, the activists are said to have also pelted stones at Noorania Juma mosque and ripped off banners at Mudipu junction. It is alleged that they also assaulted three people who were going home in a auto rickshaw. The seriously injured Imran, Sawad and others were going home after playing a cricket match when the assault took place.
As reported earlier, the bus in which about 38 students of Mudipu government college were about to go on an educational tour of Bengaluru and Mysuru, when the activists waylaid the bus saying that boy and girl students participating in the tour belonged to different communities. Four lecturers, 24 boys and 14 girls were part of the tour.
The police who came to the the spot had to request the college management to cancel the tour to avoid further trouble.
The girl students were thereafter sent home with their parents, while the boy students were accommodated at the college premises for the night.
A group which was about to destroy the bus was sent back after the police resorted to lathi charge to disperse the crowd. Yet the group managed somehow to cause damages to the bus by breaking its windshield.
Police who had gathered there and members of the public present at the spot also came under the rain of stone pelting. A personnel of Karnataka State Reserve Police force, Hareesh, suffered injury to his hand in the incident. Stones and soda bottles were also pelted at shops.
Police security in the area has been beefed up.