Recently the Bangalore police arrested 18 Muslim men, including two from Hyderabad and Maharashtra, for allegedly trying to assassinate several prominent personalities in Karnataka including media persons Vijay Sankeshwar, Vishveshwar Bhat and Pratap Simha.
In his article published in outlook Vishveshwar Bhat challenged ‘Let anyone show me a single line I have written in my 23 years as journalist that is anti-Muslim.’ It must be recalled that Bhat had resigned from Vijaya Karnataka (ToI group) on 8th Dec 2010 on the ground that he wanted a three-year sabbatical to go abroad and study which the Jains of Times group were declined to give. However, the press club gossip revealed another version in a hushed tone. This version said that Bhat was promoting right wing nationalism appealing to the majority Hindus, attracting the ire of Christians, Muslims and Communists. It maintained that they waited for opportunities, highlighted their viewpoints and were able to convince ToI management to push Mr. Bhat to a corner. Ofcourse, Mr.Bhat was taking sides even within the BJP singing to the tune of Ananth Kumar faction.
When Bhat was nominated unanimously for an honorary doctorate by the Karnataka University Dharwad (KUD), the Karnataka chapter of Transparency International dashed off a petition accusing the editor of being “primarily responsible for instigating and fuelling communal hatred by regularly publishing extremely volatile and offensive articles and editorials.” The Federation of the Dakshina Kannada Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Unions also launched agitation against Mr. Bhat demanding withholding of the doctorate by the KUD to Mr. Vishweshwar Bhat and had appealed to the administrative board of ToI to relieve Mr. Bhat of his post.
On 27 December 2008, the Mangalore South police station, registered a case (FIR No 343, dated 27-12-2008) in connection with an article written by the noted Kannada author S.L. Bhyrappa in Vijaya Karnataka on 16 October 2008. The case was registered on a complaint filed by P. B. D’Sa, president of the Dakshina Kannada unit of Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). In his complaint, D’Sa alleged the article incited communal feelings, in the wake of the attack on churches in Karnataka in September last year. The complaint said the article had hurt the feelings of Christians, and pointed to a number of demonstrations and jathas taken out by Christians against it. The local diocese had termed the article “communally provocative” when it was published.
Six days later a complaint was booked by the Mangalore North police [case (FIR No. 2, dated 2-1-2009)] which dealt with an article written by Pratap Simha (another journalist allegedly on the target list) a sub-editor with the paper who writes a weekly column published on 20 September 2008. The complainant in this case is James Louis, vice-president of the Bharathiya Crista Seva Sanghatane (BCSS). And here, too, the charges are identical: of endorsing the bashing of the minority community and seeking to create discord among various communities. The report said ‘Predictably, the author of the article (Simha), the editor of the paper (Bhat), the resident editor (Kumaranath) and the printer (Ramesh) have been named in this complaint. But also standing “accused” are five directors of Vijayanand Printers Limited (VPL), the Times of India subsidiary that publishes the paper: Ravi Dhariwal, Chinnen Das, Anand Sankeshwar, Bhaskar Das, and Probal Ghoshal.’
It must be recalled that Vishweshwar Bhat was also in news in June this year when he was arrested by the Bangalore Police on June 27, in connection with a defamation case. He was later released the same evening after he was granted bail but had to face advocate fraternity’s ire. This time it was bar association who resented with him.
Earlier in 2008 a report ‘Mangalore: Anti-Christian Article in Kannada Daily Evokes Strong Reaction’ stated that various organizations staged a huge protest in front of the office of the district deputy commissioner (DC) here, against an article that appeared in a Kannada daily, on Thursday October 16.
Commenting upon the news item a reader wrote ‘
Vijaya Karnataka has been spearheading hatred articles against Christians for quite some time and it is time someone took legal action against the publisher for spreading religious enmity. Every Saturday, the paper has been carrying articles by a certain Pratap Simha which have very distorted opinions about Christians.
The above news items and subsequent comment on a news item published denote that it was the Christian minority, SCs & STs and advocate fraternity not Muslims who were mainly against Bhat and Pratap Simha two of the 3 journalists who are allegedly on the target list of the alleged assassination plot. So it raises a question ‘Are Muslims being scapegoated?’
In his article ‘A Terror Tale With Plenty of Loose Ends’ senior correspondent of Tehelka.com Imran Khan also scoffed at the two alleged terror modules busted by Bangalore police asserting that ‘Tehelka looked at the FIR and found that at the moment, the police have little more than two pistols they claim to have seized and the confessional statements of three of the accused. According to Section 36 of the Indian Evidence Act, confessions given to a police officer is not permissible as evidence in a court of law. Worse, even going by the confessions that form the basis of the FIR, there seems little evidence, at this stage, to link the other accused with the alleged plot, let alone with international terrorist outfits.
He further stated ‘Civil society activists remain skeptical of the police’s claims. The family of the arrested men has accused the police of arresting them on false charges. And Muslim groups have accused the police of fabricating evidence and victimising innocent members of the minority community. They point out to several previous instances where high-profile arrests made by the police resulted in acquittals.’
He also cited two cases ‘In 2008, a month before the BJP came to power in Karnataka, a bomb went off in a magistrate’s court in Hubli where seven SIMI members were to be produced. Police had blamed SIMI for the blast. Later it turned out that the blast was carried out by Nagaraj Jambagi, leader of a criminal gang with links to the Sri Ram Sene. The same year, the police arrested 15 people in Belgaum based on the material found on the hard disk. After spending three years in jail, they were acquitted.
Imran Khan concludes ‘while the investigation continues, the jury is still out on whether they have cracked a sinister terror plot that could have threatened the fragile communal harmony of an entire state, or whether the young men arrested and branded terrorists paid for nothing more than who they are.’