Cycle of communal murders continues in coastal Karnataka’s Mangaluru region

The murder was captured on mobile phones by witnesses near the scene of the crime.

Suhas Shetty was the prime accused in the July 28, 2022, murder of Mohammed Fazil, 23, who had links with communal groups but no prior criminal history. Shetty had been released on bail a few months earlier.

In 2022, Mohammed Fazil was murdered at a clothing store in Surathkal on the outskirts of Mangaluru city on the evening of July 28 by four men who arrived in a car and chased him on the street before cornering him in the store, where he ran to escape the attackers.

The attackers specifically targeted Mohammed Fazil after they kept a watch over his house and identified him, and then targeted him, police said. It occurred a few days after a gang associated with the then-active radical Islamist group Popular Front of India (PFI) murdered BJP youth leader Praveen Nettaru, 32, in Bellare village of the region.

The investigations in the May 1 murder of Suhas Shetty have revealed that the murder of the Hindutva activist was plotted by Abdul Safwan, 29, who had been the target of an attack by Shetty’s gang in 2023, and Adil Maharoof, elder brother of Mohammed Fazil.

“There were two earlier attempts for the murder (of Shetty) but they were not successful. On May 1 the Safwan gang was able to find out the exact movement plans (of Shetty). The gang used two hired vehicles – one to chase and the other to ram the car of the victim. We have arrested eight persons directly involved in the murder,” Anupam Agrawal, Commissioner of Police, Mangaluru, said last week.

“It cannot be said that it was only a revenge killing (for the Fazil murder of 2022) because Safwan was fearful of an attack on him. It is a collaborative murder between Safwan and Adil (the brother of Fazil). Adil provided Rs 5 lakh for the murder. He has also been arrested, ” the Mangaluru police commissioner said.

The Mangaluru police commissioner said the police were looking at whether the accused were linked to the PFI or its political offshoot, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI).

Govt rejects call for NIA probe

While the May 1 murder has assumed a communal tone on account of the individual gangsters involved and the Opposition BJP trying to portray it as the murder of a hapless Hindutva worker, the Congress government has pointed to the criminal history of the victim and the accused to suggest that the Suhas Shetty killing is a gangland murder.

On May 4, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara rejected the BJP’s demand for an investigation by the National Investigation Agency into the murder of the Hindutva activist.

“Our view is that our police are doing their job. Eight people have been arrested and investigations are in progress. At this stage there is no need to hand over the case to the NIA,” the home minister said. He also referred to the criminal record of Shetty and said this was the reason no Congress leaders visited his home after the murder.

The Suhas Shetty murder incidentally occurred against the backdrop of the beating to death of a daily-wage worker from Kerala, identified as Md Ashraf, 36, by a mob after he reportedly uttered a slogan while crossing a field in Mangaluru.

The latest violence is a continuation of communally tinged, mindless murders that have been witnessed in coastal Karnataka over the years involving small-time local gangsters with affiliations to the right-wing Hindutva fringe groups or people linked to the PFI.

Previous cycles of communal murders in coastal Karnataka

In the previous high-profile cycle of murder in 2022, an 18-year-old Muslim youth from Kerala, Masood B, was killed in Bellare on July 20; a BJP youth leader from the same village, Praveen Nettaru, was killed on July 26 in an apparent act of revenge by Muslim gangs; and Mohammed Fazil was killed on July 28 in retaliation by the Hindutva gangs.

In 2015, a flower seller linked to the Bajrang Dal, Prashant Poojary, was killed in the Moodabidri region of Dakshina Kannada by a Muslim gang. As a fallout of the murder, an accused in the case, Mustafa Kovoor, was killed in the Mysuru jail in 2016 by a gangster, Kiran Shetty. Another accused in the case, Imtiyaz, was stabbed by a gang linked to a local gangster Lokesh Kodikere in 2018 in Mangaluru.

In 2017, an SDPI activist Ashraf Kalayi was killed by a group that featured Bajrang Dal activists as well in the Bantwal region of Dakshina Kannada. A few days after the Kalayi murder, RSS worker Sharath Madivala was killed in the same region. Among the men arrested in the case were PFI office-bearers in Karnataka.

In 2018, on January 3, a Hindu right-wing activist, Deepak Rao, was killed in Mangaluru. On the same day, a local Muslim businessman, Abdul Basheer, was killed by a gang in a plan allegedly hatched by gangsters with right-wing affiliations who were lodged in the Mangaluru prison.

While cases of communal murders in Mangaluru and Dakshina Kannada usually witness tit-for-tat reactions, the communal murders in other parts of Karnataka tend to be more isolated.

“An investigation is not only about arresting the accused. Sometimes even after arrests in cases of major crime, the prosecution is not pursued properly, the accused obtain bail easily and the cases lead to acquittals as a consequence,” a senior Karnataka police official stated in 2022 after a series of three murders.

“We have to break the cycle of violence. We have visited the jail and action has to be taken on prison activities. If there is an accused who is absconding we have to find them or declare them proclaimed offenders, seize their properties and use different laws to bring them to book. There is a need for stricter measures to be put in place in the erstwhile Dakshina Kannada and Udupi region,” the then ADGP (law and order) said.