The Kakati police have so far arrested 8 people in connection with the case. They are yet to trace the other accused and the eloped couple.
Fact-finding team interacting with villagers at Hosa Vantamuri in Belagavi
Following the ongoing furore over the Belagavi incident, where a 40-year-old woman was paraded naked nearly a week ago, the Karnataka government on Sunday, 17 December, ordered that the case be investigated by the state police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
The incident occurred in the early hours of 11 December in the Hosa Vantamuri village of the Belagavi district. It already created political ripples, with both the Congress and the BJP at the receiving end.
The 40-year-old woman in Belagavi was allegedly stripped and paraded naked and then tied to a lamp post in that condition by a group of 10-15 men from the village after her son eloped with a girl from the same community (Nayak).
The jurisdictional Kakati Police Station was informed about the incident around 4 am on 11 December, and a police sub-inspector and his team rushed to the spot, freed the woman, and clothed her.
She was then taken to a hospital where she was administered treatment.
By around 7 am, the police had arrested eight people in connection with the case after identifying them from CCTV footage and through local inquiries.
They also launched a manhunt for the remaining eight-odd people who were involved in the incident.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah termed the incident “extremely inhuman” and said that stringent action would be taken against the perpetrators.
However, the BJP — in the Opposition in the state — appeared to be dissatisfied with the assurances.
The saffron party’s national president JP Nadda sent a five-member fact-finding committee to Karnataka to submit a report on the incident that took place even as the winter session of the Karnataka Assembly was taking place in the same district.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman slammed the Congress government in Karnataka for allowing atrocities against women and the downtrodden — particularly those belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs).
The BJP also staged statewide demonstrations in all districts in Karnataka condemning the incident.
Subsequently, Congress leaders told South First that the BJP was politicising the incident to divert the attention of the masses from the major security breach that occurred at the newly constructed Parliament building in New Delhi, where two intruders in the garb of visitors entered the building and unleashed gas canisters to register their protest.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the Karnataka government and the state’s police chief after the incident.
The purported act, as reported, seemed to have a “stereotyped patriarchal approach”, which was a clear demonstration of the violation of the right to life and dignity of the victim, the NHRC observed in its statement.
The Karnataka police, which formed a special inquiry team to further probe the incident, learnt that there was negligence on the part of the Kakati Police Station’s Inspector Vijay Kumar Sinnur.
He was placed under suspension indefinitely pending the inquiry.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court took up a suo-motu case over the incident. It termed the incident worse than what had happened to Draupadi in the Mahabarata, as Lord Krishna came to the rescue of the mythological queen, but no one came to help the Belagavi victim. The modern world was of Dushasana, the court observed.
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