Karnataka BJP MLA booked for claiming CM Siddaramaiah ‘got 24 Hindu activists killed’

MLA Harish Poonja allegedly claimed at a public event that CM Siddaramaiah ‘got 24 Hindu activists killed,’ a recurring claim of the BJP which has been disproved in the media.
Karnataka BJP MLA Harish Poonja
Karnataka BJP MLA Harish Poonja
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The Karnataka police have registered a first information report (FIR) against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Harish Poonja over his statement claiming that Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had “got 24 Hindu activists killed.” Harish Poonja, who is representing the Belthangady Assembly constituency in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district for a second time, allegedly made the statement when he was venting his ire at Hindutva activists who had campaigned for Congress. Audio and video clips of the statement, which he allegedly made while speaking at an event in Belthangady last week, have gone viral on social media. 

"You sought a vote for Siddaramaiah who got 24 Hindu activists killed. You sought a vote for Congress which is proposing a ban on Bajrang Dal," he had said in a speech made in Tulu. The statement had stirred controversy in the state. 

The accusation is based on a narrative that has been propagated by the BJP in Karnataka since 2017 and has already been debunked in the media. In 2017, BJP MP from Karnataka Shobha Karandlaje wrote to the Union Home Minister claiming that 23 Hindus were murdered in the state under the Congress government at the time, alleging that then CM Siddaramaiah had failed to maintain communal harmony. However, a ground report by Scroll.in examining the BJP’s claims found that one of the supposed victims of communal violence on the BJP’s ‘murdered’ list was alive. The report also found that many of the men on the BJP’s list were not killed in communal clashes but died due to other reasons. 

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has since said that one of the victims on the list — Paresh Mesta — was not killed due to communal violence. At the time of his death in December 2017, Shobha Karandlaje had claimed that Paresh was tortured before he was killed by ‘jihadi elements.’

A police complaint was lodged against Harish Poonja’s statement by Belthangady Mahila Congress President Namitha K Poojary, accusing him of spreading communal hate and disrupting peace, according to Deccan Herald. The FIR was registered under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). 

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