Bengaluru court frames terror charges against gang in 2022 Bajrang Dal activist’s murder case
Bajrang Dal activist Harsha Nagaraj alias Harsha Hindu was murdered on the night of February 20, 2022, in the Doddapete area of Shivamogga.
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Bajrang Dal worker Harsha Nagaraj alias Harsha Hindu was murdered in Shivamogga in February 2022. (PTI, file)A special court in Bengaluru has framed charges of terrorism, murder and conspiracy against 10 people from Karnataka’s Shivamogga region over the February 20, 2022 murder of Bajrang Dal activist Harsha Nagaraj alias Harsha Hindu in the Doddapete area of Shivamogga city.
A special court for terrorism cases on Thursday framed the charges against Reehan Sharif, 23, and nine others under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and sections 302 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) based on a chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). All the accused have pleaded not guilty and have chosen to be tried by the court.
Nagaraj was murdered on the night of February 20 in the Doddapete police station limits of Shivamogga after he left his home to eat dinner at a restaurant with a couple of friends.
A gang that was lying in wait in a car and an auto-rickshaw hacked the Bajrang Dal worker to death with swords when he got isolated from his associates for a while.
Shivamogga witnessed a brief spell of violence the next morning when a funeral procession was taken out with Nagaraj’s body.
The local police initially arrested Sharif alias Kasi, Mohammed Kashif, 30, Asif alias Asifullah Khan alias Chiku, 24, and Abdul Afwan alias Derar, 22, who have a history of involvement in as many as 16 crimes in Shivamogga since 2016. The case was later handed over to the NIA for investigation.
Apart from Kasi, Kashif, Chiku and Derar, the NIA has named Syed Faroz S alias Nihal, 21, Abdul Khadar Jilani, 25, Roshan A, 27, Faraz Pasha, 26, Syed Nadeem, 22, and Jafar Sadiq, 52.
All the suspects who are in judicial custody at present have been additionally charged with causing “communal disharmony and ill-will among the members of Hindu and Muslim community and thereby committed the offence punishable under Sec.153A of IPC”.
Nagaraj had four criminal cases against him starting with a January 2016 case where he was accused of causing intentional insult to religion through posts made on social media against Prophet Mohammed.
The case had brought notoriety to the then 22-year-old which continued to grow subsequently on account of his emergence as a local thug, police sources said.
Nagaraj was also linked to three cases of assault in Shivamogga between 2017 and 2019, including two against Muslims. In December 2020, he was arrested in a rioting case in the Shivamogga cloth market where a group of Muslims were attacked and was released on bail in January 2021.
In the days before his death, Nagaraj had been active on social media over the anti-hijab protests on some college campuses in Shivamogga.
The murder that occurred when the BJP was in power in Karnataka became a rallying point for the BJP and right-wing groups and an NIA probe was facilitated after BJP leaders like Union minister Shobha Karandlaje and then state minister K S Eshwarappa sought it.
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