Of 4 Karnataka murder cases in PFI ban order, all acquitted in 1; 2 in court

According to the ministry notification, “PFI cadres have been involved in several terrorist acts and murder of several persons” and the cases are related to the murders of RSS workers Sharath Madivala (2017) and R Rudresh (2016), Bajrang Dal’s Praveen Pujari (2016) and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha leader Praveen Nettaru (2022).

Those accused of killing Pujari—all PFI members according to police— were acquitted by the Madikeri sessions court in 2021 because there was “no cogent, corroborative and convincing evidence placed by the prosecution to prove the guilt of the accused persons”.

Pujari (30) was killed in Kushalnagar of Kodagu district in August 2016 “in retaliation for” the stone-pelting on a mosque during the Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s torchlight procession.

“As per the confessional statements of the accused go to show that, some prime members of PFI have abetted the commission of the offence, but there is no evidence about those persons, and the alleged motive for the commission of offence is not established,” the court’s November 30 order said.

Despite police’s initial claims that the accused were PFI members, such details were not present in investigating officers’ depositions, T H Aboobaker, the lawyer who represented the accused, told The Indian Express.

After Nettaru was killed on July 26, 2022, apparently in retaliation for the killing of 18-year-old Muslim youth Masood B, ADGP Alok Kumar said some of the accused had been associated with the PFI. The case was subsequently handed over to the NIA.

Rudresh was murdered by two men on Kamaraj Road in central Bengaluru after an RSS march on October 16, 2016. Police then arrested five alleged PFI members. As the BJP, then in the Opposition, mounted pressure, the case was later handed over to the NIA. It has filed a chargesheet under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Asim Sheriff, the PFI’s Bengaluru district president then, was allegedly in contact with Rudresh’s killers through an associate’s phone in the lead-up to the murder. Sheriff has been in prison since 2016.

In July this year, the Karnataka High Court rejected bail to Irfan Pasha and Mohammed Mujeeb Ulla, two other accused, and said the motive behind the Rudresh murder was to create terror in the minds of RSS members.

Seventeen people were arrested after Sharath was killed on July 4, 2017, triggering communal tension in the coastal Dakshina Kannada district, a year ahead of the Assembly elections.

Sharath was killed “in retaliation for” the murder of SDPI worker Ashraf Kalayi, allegedly by a gang that included Bajrang Dal workers, in the Bantwal region.

Khaleelullah, PFI Chamarajanagar district president, was arrested on charges of harbouring the killers. He got bail from the high court in 2018 and met with a motorcycle accident while heading to a mosque in August 2020. Trial is underway in both the Rudresh and Sharath murder cases.