As the date of the Ram Mandir inauguration in Ayodhya approaches, the Karnataka police department seems to have opened cases for investigation against Ram Mandir activists who allegedly engaged in property destruction and other offences during the peak of the movement for Ram Mandir thirty years ago.
According to an IANS report, the police department has assembled a special team and compiled a list of ‘suspects’ in instances related to the 1992 Ram Mandir movement, which led to acts of violence by Islamists and ensuing intercommunal conflicts.
Further, regarding a claimed incident of torching a minority-owned store in Hubballi on December 5, 1992, Srikanth Poojari has been taken into custody by the Hubballi police. Poojari is the third defendant in the case, and eight more defendants are being sought after by the police. Poojari was put under court supervision.
In a similar vein, Hubballi police have also created a list of 300 ‘suspects’ they claim are connected to communal conflicts that occurred between 1992 and 1996, according to the IANS report. The ‘accused’ are now in their early and late 70s, according to police sources, and many of them have left the city.
Many of the ‘suspects’ hold prominent positions today, and the police are contemplating the potential consequences of filing lawsuits against them. It is believed that the police department has been instructed by the Congress government to investigate these cases extensively.
Numerous members of the Ram Janma Bhoomi movement have gone on to become well-known BJP politicians and reports claim that under the BJP’s rule, cases against all these well-known leaders were dismissed.
Hindu organizations have denounced the Congress government’s current action with outrage. They have said that the Congress government, unable to stand the door-to-door campaigning by the BJP and Hindu organizations against the backdrop of the opening of the Sri Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, is using this tactic to start investigating instances that were reported thirty years ago.
The news is probably going to spark a big debate in the state. Notably, major violence broke out in Karnataka in the 1990s as a result of Islamist opposition to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that was launched by veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani.