Bengaluru: Former Karnataka CM Basaravaj Bommai on Friday criticised Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and questioned his silence on the Haveri moral policing incident wherein a woman had alleged gang-rape by vigilantes.
“The government was treading the path of dual policy in giving protection to the victim who belongs to the minority community,” he said, while accusing the state Congress of having double standards over moral policing.
Talking to reporters here on Friday, he said the woman had been gang-raped, but the police had initially ruled out that offence and invoked the various sections of law that would give bail to the accused.
“Now, the woman has openly stated that she had been sexually abused and the case then became serious. The victim must undergo the medical test afresh. The CM claims that he is the champion of minorities but a woman belonging to the minority community has been sexually assaulted. The government did not even come forward to provide her protection,” the senior BJP leader said.
The former chief minister claimed that there has been a 30 per cent increase in incidents of crime in the last nine months.
“Similar incidents in the past have been hushed up. The Haveri incident must be probed separately. An investigation team must be constituted to probe it,” he said.
A victim of moral policing released a video on Thursday in which she said that she was repeatedly gang-raped by vigilantes in Haveri district of Karnataka.
The homemaker was dragged out of a hotel after being seen with a person from another religion and beaten up in Hangal town on January 8.
The victim who belongs to the minority community stated that, when she was at the hotel, a gang of five to six men barged inside, questioned her and took her on their motorcycles forcibly.
They took her to an isolated place and assaulted her brutally and later, all of them raped her.
Later, they asked her to sit in a car and the driver also raped her. Her ordeal did not end here. She was taken to two to three places and gang-raped.
The accused later took her to a National Highway, and she got on a bus.
“I want them to be punished,” she said in the video in an appeal to the police.
Her husband also told the media that his wife was gang-raped by the group of vigilantes.
“They had kidnapped and inhumanly attacked my wife. She had opened up about this brutality with one of the family members,” he said.
–IANS