The ruling BJP and opposition Congress on Thursday sought to portray a young man hold accountable for the riot in Bengaluru two days earlier, as a member of the other party while denying any link with him.
P Naveen, the minor whose social media post has instigated the mob violence, is a nephew of Pulakeshinagar Congress MLA Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy. The opposition party Congress, therefore, is putting a lot of effort to keep distance itself from him.
The boy who posted the offensive religious content on Facebook is a Congress worker, deputy chief minister CN Ashwath Narayan told the media on Thursday. “Naveen is not a BJP worker; he is part of the Congress, and (Congress state president) DK Shivakumar does not have full information,” Ashwath Narayan said, displaying a poster featuring Shivakumar and Naveen. The online post had raged sections of Muslims who took out a protest demonstration on Tuesday night, which soon fall into massive violence leading to police firing and the death of at least three people.
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Meanwhile, opposition leader Siddaramaiah and state BJP president Nalinkumar Kateel got into a war of words over the issue. Kateel ridiculed the Congress party’s “dilemma” is not fully slamming the attack on the house of its own MLA, who is a member of the Dalit community. Kateel said the Congress was caught in a delicate situation. If it were to take the side of rioters, it would invite the rage of Dalits and backward class voters. If it were to speak in support of its MLA, it would hurt the Muslim vote bank. So, the party has chosen to put blame on the police for the chaos, he said. Former chief minister Siddaramaiah took to a series of tweets to pour out his frustration on the BJP and Kateel. He asked Kateel why he was identifying Murthy as a Dalit and not as a Hindu, and asked him whether he was in favor of the Hindus or the Dalits.