Congress to top cop: File cases against Araga, Ravi

NT Correspondent

Congress on Friday submitted a letter to the Bengaluru Commissioner demanding criminal charges against Karnataka Minister for Home Affairs Araga Jnanendra and BJP General Secretary CT Ravi.

The Opposition party told Commissioner Kamal Pant that the BJP leaders had made inflammatory comments to instigate communal disturbance. The saffron party leaders had claimed that the killing of a youth in an instance of road rage was in fact due to his religion, caste and the fact that he “could not speak Urdu.” Since then, Jnanendra has withdrawn his comments, admitting that he was mistaken and that it was purely a case of road rage.

State Congress president DK Shivakumar had on Thursday demanded that Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai sack Jnanendra over the comments, failing which the Congress would stage a protest and file a complaint.

The letter signed by Bengaluru Central District Congress Committee President G Shekhar said that Jnanendra and Ravi had deliberately made malicious statements to disturb peace. “On April 6, around 11 in the morning, Karnataka government’s Home Minister Araga Jnanendra and BJP General Secretary CT Ravi had made comments to instigate and disturb peace with regard to the killing of one Chandru in Bengaluru city’s JJ Nagar police station limits,” it said.

The letter went on to add that the state police had only described a murder brought on by road rage and that the BJP leaders had chosen to disregard the facts and had maliciously tried to instigate religious and castebased sentiments, apart from linguistic pride. The statement made by Araga Jnanendra would also influence the outcome of the investigation, it added.

“They should be booked under IPC (Indian Penal Code) sections 120 A (criminal conspiracy), 120 B, 124 A (sedition), 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups based on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc), 153 B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration,” the statement read. The comments made by the two BJP leaders could have led to harm to public property and lives of people, it added.