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It is
hardly common knowledge that this city slid from being a
largely harmonious city under British rule in the late
18th century to a hotbed of communalism in the 1990s
and, a decade later, to a cauldron of communal poison
nourishing, and nourished by, underworld dons. And
terror outfits followed suite.
By Vishal Arora It has nurtured Bollywood stars,
politicians, cricketers and authors. Aishwarya Rai,
Shilpa Shetty, Suneil Shetty, George Fernandes, Margaret
Alva, Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar, Aravind Adiga and
scores of other celebrities grew up in this city.
The city is equally prominent in business. Two
nationalised banks were founded here. It's an upcoming
IT hub, as three special economic zones (SEZs) are being
set up. And a few more are being planned. A bulk of
India's coffee and cashew is exported from this city.
Boasting numerous educational institutions, it has a
special lure for youngsters.
These are some positive attributes that can help many to
identify this city. Others may need to be told that it's
a city where women were attacked in a pub earlier this
year. And then they'll exclaim, "Ah, you're talking
about Mangalore.”
The city of Mangalore in Dakshina Kannada district in
southwest Karnataka has hit the national media headlines
thrice in recent times, all of them for the wrong
reasons: in September 2008, following a series of
attacks on churches in the state by the Rightwing
Bajrang Dal; in December 2008, after a series of attacks
on fashion shows, in particular one held at Moti Mahal
in the city; and in January 2009, following an assault
on women visiting a pub. The latter two were carried out
by male activists of the Rightwing Sri Ram Sene. The
incidents shocked the country, but left it no wiser to
the history of this ostensibly peaceable city's long
decline into communalism and gangsterism.
It is the last incident that grabbed the attention of
the nation. On January 24 this year, 40 members of the
Sri Ram Sene stormed a pub called Amnesia " the Lounge'
and brutally ejected the women inside, accusing them of
behaving outside the permit of Hindu tradition. Two of
the women were hospitalised. A video of the incident,
originally taken by journalists from Daijiworld.com, an
online e-newspaper that primarily serves the coastal
Konkan region, was telecast by national television
channels.
The Sene might be a maverick outfit hungry for
nationwide publicity but it is not unknown to the
establishment. According to The Indian Express (January
30, 2009), Prasad Attavar, the organisation's state
vice-president, who allegedly led the attack on the pub,
heads a private security agency that had, ironically,
been contracted by the Mangalore administration to
provide security for a regional cultural festival,
Karavali Utsav, which was in progress at the time of the
attack.
Moral policing seems to have become the Sene's
trademark. The local press reported at least 20
incidents of moral policing in Mangalore prior to the
pub assault. On January 3, according to a local daily,
Jaya Kirana, Sene activists attacked St Ligoria Primary
School for allegedly having distributed the Bible to
some students. The Karavali Ale newspaper reported that
on February 2, "unidentified" Rightwing activists forced
a group of engineering students who were leaving for
Bangalore for an intercollegiate competition to cancel
their trip.
Despite the opprobrium that the Sri Ram Sene has
attracted, it has not stopped its shenanigans. Most
recently, The Hindu reported that on the evening of May
16, the day that the general election results were
announced, a group of people celebrating the victory of
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Nalin Kumar
Kateel from Dakshina Kannada in the Lok Sabha election
ransacked the houses of four Muslim families and
assaulted people with sticks, soda bottles, cricket bats
and cycle chains in the Nettrakere area in Bantwal
taluka in Mangalore.
Although Mangalore has usually flown under the radar, it
is not just another city. It has, for one, nurtured a
whole host of authors, politicians, Bollywood stars and
cricketers. For another, the city has a literacy rate of
83 percent, far higher than the national literacy rate
of 61 percent (United Nations: Millennium Development
Goals Report 2006). This renders the significance of
Mangalore's decline stark in comparison to the rest of
the country. But shocking though the incidents of
Rightwing menace were, their reportage downplayed the
prevailing atmosphere in the city, which is murkier. A
lot murkier.
In fact, even after the media conniption, it is hardly
common knowledge that Mangalore slid from being a
largely harmonious city under British rule in the late
18th century to a hotbed of communalism in the 1990s
and, a decade later, to a cauldron of communal poison
nourishing, and nourished by, underworld dons. And
terror outfits followed suite.
Situated on the west coast and encircled by the
Netravati and Gurupura rivers that debouch into the
Arabian Sea, Mangalore's landscape resembles that of Goa:
beaches, rolling hills, coconut palms and freshwater
bodies. The buildings, roofed with red clay tiles, are
reminders of Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama, who
landed at St Mary's Island, near Mangalore, in 1498.
Mangalore's melting-pot nature has endured for a long
time: communities that originated in the north of the
country; Christians; Muslims; and a mishmash of Hindu
upper and lower castes that have only lately come to see
each other as implacable social, political and economic
hostiles.
Bound in by the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats
mountain range, Mangalore also has demographic
similarities with Goa.
The Konkanis had migrated from Goa to Mangalore in three
waves " during the early years of the Portuguese rule
and the Inquisition of 1560s; during the 1571 war with
the Sultan of Bijapur; and during the wars of 1683-1740
with the Marathas. While Hindus comprised the first
wave, the second and third waves consisted mostly of
Christians.
Konkani speaking Catholics, popularly known as
Mangalorean Catholics, are the largest Christian
community in the city. Senior Congress leader Oscar
Fernandes, former defence minister George Fernandes and
model and actor Freida Pinto, who played Latika in the
Academy Award winning film, Slumdog Millionaire, are
from this community.
Mangalore's Konkani speaking Hindus are known as Goud
Saraswat Brahmins (Goud' meaning from the north " those
who lived on the banks of the now extinct river
Saraswati in Punjab and Kashmir; the word Saraswat'
identifies their Aryan roots).
Unlike the Mangalorean Catholics, the Goud Saraswati
Brahmins did not adopt Portuguese culture. Vijay Mallya
of United Breweries and Kingfisher Airlines, cricketer
Sanjay Manjrekar, Canara Bank founder Ammembal Subba Rao
Pai and Syndicate Bank founder Upendra Anant Pai are
from the Goud Saraswat Brahmin community. Booker Prize
winner Aravind Adiga and cricketer Ravi Shastri are from
the Shivalli Madhwa Brahmin community.
Hinduism is the majority religion here. (In fact,
Mangalore derives its name from a local Hindu deity,
Mangaladevi.) Bunts, Mogaveeras, Billavas and Ganigas
are the largest people groups in the Hindu community.
The distinctions between them have a significant
electoral impact.
The Bunts (meaning powerful) are higher caste Kshatriyas
and one of the most affluent communities in south India.
Aishwarya Rai, Shilpa Shetty and Suneil Shetty are from
this community. While the Mogaveeras, classified as a
Scheduled Caste, are primarily a fishing community, the
Billavas have traditionally been toddy-tappers, and the
Ganigas, who are Shudras, are mostly oil producers and
merchants.
BJP leader Manorama Madhwaraj is from the Mogaveera
community, and Congress veteran Janardhan Poojary is a
Billava.
Mangalore's Muslims are mainly from the Beary community,
which dates back more than 1,350 years and has its own
unique traditions and distinct cultural identity. They
belong to the conservative Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam
and speak their own dialect. While a majority of the
Bearys are fish traders, some are active in local
politics as legislators from the Congress and the Janata
Dal (Secular).
"Unlike in other parts of the country, most communities
in Mangalore have always identified themselves as
belonging to their respective castes, rather than
sharing one common identity based on their religion,"
says John Fernandes, professor and head of Chair in
Christianity at Mangalore University. But although the
role of caste in the local economy is easily visible,
conflict was kept at bay by the fact that no community
is big enough to dominate the others.
Until lately. "The tensions [today] are rooted in
economics and power politics, but, on the surface, they
appear to be religious," says Fernandes. The story is
still unfolding, say voices from Mangalore's civil
society, warning that with the BJP bagging the Lok Sabha
seat from Dakshina Kannada district in the recently
concluded general election, the city could be headed for
even worse times. The recent violence can, in fact, be
linked to the excitement among Rightwing groups about
the BJP's increasing clout, believes Walter D'Souza,
founder and editor in chief of Daijiworld.com.
The BJP came to power on its own in Karnataka only in
May 2008. The party's first standalone government in a
south Indian state was preceded by a 20-month rule in
alliance with the JD (S). But it was hardly a secret
that BJP workers, along with the cadres of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had been preparing for a
communal harvest in the state, particularly in
Mangalore, for more than two decades.
"They [the Sangh Parivar] have made inroads into every
nook and corner of Dakshina Kannada district. Through
their numerous organisations, they lead almost all
cultural and public functions," says Pattabiram Somayaji,
lecturer of English at the University College of
Mangalore and district president of the Karnataka Koumu
Souharda Vedike (Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum).
The BJP's influence began to appear in the 1980s. It won
seats (18) for the first time in Karnataka in 1983. Nine
of these seats were won from the undivided Dakshina
Kannada district comprising Mangalore and Udupi
districts (which later became separate constituencies).
Somayaji says that the Sangh Parivar took advantage of
economic inequalities under Congress chief minister D
Devraj Urs (1972-77 and 1978-80). Urs, a heavy-handed
ruler and part of the socalled Syndicate of powerful
regional satraps, had brought in land tenancy reforms in
Karnataka which, though largely successful, benefited
mainly the larger tenants, the Bunts. Many of the Bunts
owned some land that they could leverage to lease more
land for commercial cultivation that would pay for
increasing their share in urban business.
The smaller tenants, the Billavas, who had little
original collateral, fell by the wayside. For the
younger generation, especially, the traditional Billava
occupation of toddy-tapping became an unattractive and
difficult way of earning a livelihood, since classier
drinks had begun cornering the market.
Unlike elsewhere in Karnataka, Christians and Muslims in
Mangalore were mainly from the middle class and not from
Dalit or tribal backgrounds. The Christians had
well-established institutions, both religious and
educational, which became symbols of their prosperity.
Even Muslims run educational institutions in the city.
Besides, both Muslims and Christians advanced
financially by migrating to the Gulf for employment.
The Mogaveeras, who were fish-catchers in the employ of
the upper castes, and the Billavas were left behind on
the road to development. The Sangh Parivar directed
their sense of injury at outsider' Muslims and
Christians. "A majority of Sangh Parivar supporters are
Billavas and Mogaveeras," says Somayaji, especially the
Billavas, who had once been predominantly pro-Congress.
The main accused in the pub attack, 28-year-old Prasad
Attavar, is from the Billava community.
"While underlying causes of conflict were there,
tensions did not surface until the demolition of the
Babri Masjid [in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh in December
1992]," says John Fernandes. The demolition led to
communal violence in Karnataka, including Mangalore,
that took the lives of 78 people, mostly Muslims.
Tension continued to simmer till six years later, when
communal violence flared up in Suratkal, a Mangalore
suburb, in which 12 people were killed. (The then chief
minister of Karnataka, JH Patel, ordered an inquiry into
the riots.
However, more than a decade later, the government has
yet to make public the report of the Justice AJ
Sadashiva Commission of Inquiry.)
Globalisation, a ubiquitous deepener of economic
inequalities, has served to further infuriate the
Billava and Mogaveera communities, who largely remain
onlookers to the rash of high rise buildings, shopping
malls, restaurant chains and high-tech hospitals that
have cropped up in the city in the past five years.
Deprivation has made it easier for them to be recruited
in the Sangh Parivar.
In the early 1990s, a former BJP leader, Uma Bharti, had
tried to hoist the Indian flag at a Muslim prayer
ground, the Idgah Maidan, a disputed property in Hubli
in north Karnataka that had been in the exclusive
possession of Muslims for more than 200 years. The RSS
is not given to hoisting the tricolour, but bent its
principles this time to apparently gain legitimacy for
the social exclusion of Muslims. It had hoped that this
would provoke Muslims to object and thus declare their
"anti-India" stand.
The effort bombed " a Muslim trust offered to unfurl the
flag. The fiasco cost Uma Bharti her chief ministership
more than a decade later, when she had to resign in
August 2004 after an arrest warrant was issued against
her in a case related to an anti-Muslim riot that
occurred after the flag-hoisting incident.
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the
Sangh Parivar shifted its focus from the Idgah Maidan at
Hubli to the Sufi shrine of Baba Budangiri in
Chikmagalur district, which borders the Western Ghats.
Claiming that it was the seat of a Hindu sage, Swami
Dattatreya, the Parivar declared the shrine the "second
Ayodhya" . In the late 1990s, the RSS declared its
intention to "liberate" the shrine. But the Karnataka
Koumu Souharda Vedike frustrated the organisation's
attempts to exploit the issue by organising massive
rallies.
The Parivar then took another tack, raking up the issue
of Muslims slaughtering cows; this led to numerous
incidents of communal violence, mainly in the coastal
belt. According to a report, From Kandhamal to Karavali:
The Ugly Face of Sangh Parivar', published by the
People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in March 2009,
at least 80 major communal conflicts occurred in
Karnataka between the late 1970s and 2004.
In February 2006, the rule of the JD (S) and the
Congress ended, thanks to the opportunism of HD
Kumaraswamy, a film producer-turned politician and one
of the sons of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda.
Helped by BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa, Kumaraswamy led 42
JD (S) legislators to withdraw support to chief minister
Dharam Singh's government. This allowed the BJP to sit
in government with the JD (S) without having to seek the
people's mandate.
As part of a power sharing agreement, Kumaraswamy was to
abdicate after 20 months in favour of Yeddyurappa. But
Kumaraswamy reneged, until voted out in the assembly
elections in May 2008. The vote, apparently, was not so
much in favour of the BJP's communal politics as it was
against Kumaraswamy, who was seen as an opportunist and
was alleged to have collected Rs 1.5 billion from mining
operators in Bellary district. Since Kumaraswamy is a
Vokkaliga, his betrayal was also perceived as an insult
to the Lingayats, a more powerful community represented'
by Yeddyurappa.
Many see the BJP's victory even in the Dakshina Kannada
constituency in the recent Lok Sabha election as having
been born of Congress's weakness rather than of
communalism. The competition was between the Congress's
ageing candidate, Janardhan Poojary, and the BJP's
42-year-old Nalin Kumar Kateel. Mangalore's mainly Hindu
rural youth seemed to have identified more with the
latter. And to the youngsters in urban parts, the fact
that Kateel had a website in English and Kannada that
looked no less professional than the website of LK
Advani was indicative of his contemporariness.
According to media reports, the BJP won despite
complaints against it of irregularities such as cash
distribution and the deletion of Christian and Muslim
names from the electoral lists.
And although the Sangh Parivar has been active in
Dakshina Kannada for years, its cadre became more
aggressive after the BJP's arrival, says PB D'Sa,
president of the South Kanara unit of the PUCL.
In 2007, at least 48 attacks on Christians were reported
in various districts of Karnataka; between August 17 and
September 21, 2008, there were 28 attacks on churches,
mainly in Mangalore. D'Sa says that in every case, the
attackers were from the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Jagaran
Vedike or the Sri Rama Sene.
The August 14 attacks were seen as fallout of the
violence in Orissa's Kandhamal district, where Maoists
had killed a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Swamy
Laxmanananda Saraswati, on August 23 but for which
Christians were blamed. In Karnataka, the Sangh
Parivar's activists also based their violence on
protests against a booklet, which they said was
"derogatory" to Hindu gods, published by a Christian
group, New Life Fellowship Trust, and against the
alleged conversions of Hindus to Christianity.
"The attacks on churches in Mangalore on September 14
were well organised, as 12 churches were attacked in
different parts of the city the same day and in a
similar fashion," D'Sa says.
In September 2008, the police arrested Mahendra Kumar,
Karnataka convenor of the Bajrang Dal, and some of his
associates for the attacks. The Bajrang Dal members
carried on their mayhem in the district jail in
Mangalore, beating up Muslim inmates, including
suspected terrorists Fakeer Bava and Rafique, who were
hospitalised.
Somayaji blames the presence of a strong RSS leader,
Prabhakar Bhat Kalladka, a Kota Brahmin, and the spread
of a divisive ideology among sections of the Mangalorean
society for the increasing tensions in Mangalore. BJP's
Kateel, who won the Lok Sabha seat, is a protégé of
Kalladka, who Somayaji says controls the BJP government
of Karnataka and its police department. In fact,
Kalladka is said to have been responsible for the BJP
giving a ticket to Kateel. Rediff.com reported on May 1,
2009 that Ram Bhat, Kalladka's brother, also believes
that Kalladka virtually runs the state government.
Kalladka does not shy from airing his hardcore views.
"We have only one expectation, and that is Hindutva,"
Kalladka told Rediff. "We want the government to rule as
per Hindutva.”
If the Sangh Parivar is one end of the communal
parentheses in Mangalore, the police, accused of
targeting the minorities and human rights activists, is
the other.
Some people believe that it was the police who had
killed, on April 9 this year, Mangalore's most
aggressive human rights lawyer, Naushad Kashimji, who
had been appearing in court on behalf of Rashid Malbari,
an aide of Dawood Ibrahim. The Mangalore police had
arrested Malbari for planning terror strikes and
extortion, and Kashimji was seeking judicial custody for
him, as opposed to police custody, fearing that Malbari
would be killed in an encounter'.
The police were a natural suspect. "I request the DK [Dakshina
Kannada] police to take strict action against the
official who has killed my brother [Kashimji]. Please I
request you"¦. We all have lost a great fighter who was
fighting against crime in Karnataka. Let Allah give them
patience," said one Mohammad Kasshaf in one of the many
messages that were posted on Sahilonline after it
reported on Kashimji's killing. "Although Naushad was an
intelligent lawyer, he was disliked by the police for
the way he functioned; Naushad did not hesitate to take
on the establishment by filing private complaints
against the police on behalf on his clients," wrote
Mohammad Muiz Musba.
On April 10, the Mangalore Bar Council's seniormost
lawyer, Purushottam Poojary, with whom Kashimji had
worked as a junior, lodged a complaint at the Pandeshwar
police station against four police officers who, says
D'Sa, appear to have become encounter specialists. They
were apparently emulating Mumbai's controversial
Anti-Terrorism Squad, whose cowboy shootout with
gangsters in November 1991 became the inspiration for
the Bollywood film, Shootout at Lokhandwala, and for
trigger-happy cops all over the country.
Poojary, alleging that the cops had colluded with
Rightwing extremists, said that a few hours before his
death, Kashimji had been issued a "veiled threat by the
four officers" at the district court complex after he
finished arguing his case on behalf of Malbari.
Poojary pointed out that Kashimji appeared against the
same police officers on behalf of one Atul Rao, who, he
believed, had been falsely implicated in the murder of
Padmapriya, wife of a BJP legislator, Raghupati Bhat.
Kashimji had also appeared for 25 persons these police
officers had rounded up in connection with the murder of
BJP and Bajrang Dal leader Sukananda Shetty. He had
obtained bail for 13 of them.
Poojary told The Hindu on April 11, "Whenever Naushad [Kashimji]
heard of a case of custodial torture' by the police, he
would immediately appear on behalf of the victims"¦ and
in all the cases of this nature, he always came up
against one of these four officers.”
Poojary went on to allege that these officers worked as
"extended arms" of the Sangh Parivar and had been
targeting minorities and human rights activists ever
since the JD (S) BJP alliance came to power in the
state.
The police, however, claimed that Ravi Poojari " an
underworld don who had launched an attack on the office
of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt in Mumbai in June 2006 " was
behind the killing.
On June 11, the Karnataka High Court directed the state
government to conduct an "impartial" inquiry into the
Kashimji case.
"The incident happened in April 2009, so far no action
has been taken against erring officers. The media report
says few police officers were behind the murder of Kasim
[Kashimji]"¦ Let officers engage with the advocate to
defend their case," The Indian Express quoted the court
order as saying.
The Mangalore police was also suspected of having played
a role in the September 2008 attacks on churches.
"What was striking about these attacks, especially in
Mangalore, is that the police acted in tandem with the
Bajrang Dal," says the PUCL report. "The pattern we
observed was that the Bajrang Dal would attack Christian
places and cause injury to persons and damage to
property. Then the police would step in, not to chase
and arrest the assailants, but ostensibly to prevent any
violent retaliation by the Christians. And in the course
of the alleged preventive activity, they would assault
the Christians further.”
The report says that on September 15, 2008, a day after
a series of attacks on churches in Mangalore, Christians
gathered in churches to plan protests. "The police
imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Code
of Criminal Procedure... The police stood outside the
church compounds, and wanted the protestors to
disperse"¦ Had they [the police] accepted the legitimate
character of the protests, there would have been no
difficulty in handling them"¦ But the police behaved as
if they expected the Christians to fire Kalashnikovs or
plant RDX in the city. It was not a case of misunderstan-ding,
but unwillingness to see that they were the injured
party and had the right to protest. So the police
indulged in brutal force to clear the churches.”
The 45-minute raid ended with 113 persons being
arrested. "They [Christians] were made to sit on the
ground and an inspector taunted them saying, now tell
your prayers'," the PUCL report said. The police
registered a case against the protestors who, in turn,
registered a counter-complaint against the police. They
named the superintendent of police and DSP Jayant Shetty,
who had also been accused in Kashimji's murder.
A report of the National Minorities Commission (NCM)
also said that in the first week of the attacks on
churches, the police arrested more Christians (47) than
activists of the Bajrang Dal (36).
The rise of the underworld in Mangalore parallels the
rise of communalism in the city.
On May 28, 2009, Deputy Inspector General of Police
(Western Range) Gopal B Hosur told the media that the
police would constitute two units, each comprising 100
specially trained personnel, to check underworld
activities in the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts.
The announcement was made after the launch of the first
patrol speedboat of the Coastal Security Police (CSP) at
New Mangalore Port at Panambur.
In the 1990s " the period when the Mumbai Crime Branch
had carried out the maximum number of its
highly-controversial encounter' killings " the Mumbai
underworld relocated first to Bangalore, smelling rich
pickings in the city's booming real estate business, and
then to Mangalore, where they could use rising communal
tensions to their own ends.
“They have been here since earlier, but they really got
active in the 1990s," says Superintendent of Police (SP)
Subramayeshwar Rao. However, he doesn't think that
communalism gave the initial impetus to the underworld.
"There were other factors. Many underworld elements
operating from Mumbai had migrated from Mangalore, and
after things became difficult for them they returned to
their native land. After all, it's the second convenient
place for them. Also, it's a good city; there's a lot of
money from the Gulf and the real estate business is
booming," he says.
"Earlier, Poojari used to extort money from both Hindus
and Muslims.”
Ravi Poojari is a scarface, literally, and of medium
height and build. A school dropout who started his
criminal career in Andheri in suburban Mumbai, he speaks
English, Hindi and Kannada. Most of all, he is now seen
as a Hindu' don.
The Kashimji case highlights the religious divide in the
underworld. According to a report in Daijiworld (May 6,
2009), the lawyer representing Ravi Poojari's men,
arrested for allegedly killing Kashimji, figured in the
hitlist of Chhota Shakeel, who is seen as Chhota Rajan's
Muslim' rival.
Chhota Shakeel's aide Malbari, whom Kashimji was
representing in court, was in Mangalore to plan revenge
attacks on the Sri Ram Sene head, Pramod Muthalik, and
the BJP's Varun Gandhi, who rose to infamy for his
anti-Muslim diatribe at an election rally in Philbit in
Uttar Pradesh.
It was only a matter of time before terrorist groups
followed in the trail left by the underworld. "A nexus
between the underworld and terror groups is very much
possible," says Mangalore SP Subramayeshwar Rao.
Rediffreported (October 14, 2008) that while states such
as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Assam are
constantly under watch by the Intelligence Bureau,
security agencies now believe that Karnataka is the
state to watch out for.
"Karnataka has over the past two years become one of the
most important states where terror is concerned after
terror outfits found this state a safe haven to regroup
in"¦ While North Karnataka remained the terror hub for
nearly a year, the focus has now shifted towards
Mangalore," the report said.
"The police say it [Karnataka] has always been a hotbed
for communal tension. Mangalore and other places in
coastal Karnataka had seen violence in the aftermath of
the Babri Masjid demolition.
To counter Hindu activists, outfits in Pakistan started
to send out men to the coastal town. These persons did
not immediately focus on terror activities. They
coordinated more with the underworld, built up their
base and for a long time only focused on creating
communal tension," reported Rediff.
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Rediff
report said, two men identified as Riaz and Iqbal
Bhatkal left for Pakistan and returned after training to
coastal Karnataka. Basing themselves in Bhatkal, they
began to influence Muslim youth. They started operating
in 2001; in 2003, they became more aggressive and tied
up with several religious schools in the coastal belt.
Operatives arrested after Operation BAD “bomb blasts in
Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi in 2008" were all closely
linked to the Bhatkal brothers.
"The ISI's directive to these persons [Bhaktal brothers]
is that they ought to help out in terror activities if
they needed to hide in Pakistan. Help from the
underworld would include sneaking in of arms and
ammunition and counterfeit currency.
Moreover, the money made through drug deals would have
to be shared for terror operations. To cut a long story
short, the ISI demands protection money from the
underworld," said the Rediff report.
But not everyone's got their head out of the sand. Asked
the reason for the spurt in communalism and crime in
Mangalore, its new member of parliament, Nalin Kumar
Kateel, says, "Crime? Who says there's crime in
Mangalore? It's a peaceful city.”
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