Attacks on young women have risen alarmingly in Dakshina Kannada. And worse, the vigilante groups involved have been getting away with it although they do not bother to conceal their ideological and political colours, which are closely aligned with Hindutva, the same as the BJP, the ruling party in Karnataka.
This gives the Hindu Jagran Vedike political sanctuary and the police have tended to treat the fascist-style outfit with kid gloves.
This is exactly what happened when reportedly some 70 hoodlums of the group swooped down on private premises at Padil, near Mangalore, over the weekend and disrupted a party in progress. The hoods brutalised women to such a degree that the reporter of the television crew — who had been tipped off and shot the shameful episode — said in an interview afterwards, “What we have shown are only some of the more decent shots. What we saw through our own eyes and chose not to shoot was nothing short of rape.” And yet, the police arrived on the scene but did not stop the animal behaviour of the hoodlums.
Something similar had happened in Bengaluru some years ago when a Hindu vigilante outfit had assaulted young women coming out of a city pub. On that occasion the state home minister had pussyfooted, sending out appropriate signals to the police. The attacks are a travesty of “Hindu culture” that the Vedike claims to uphold. Indeed, the Taliban do similar things to women and claim to protect “Islamic culture”.