A Sikh man was attacked by a mob of 30-40 people who accused him of being a child abductor, in North Karnataka’s Kalburgi on 19 May.
According to police, the trigger for the attack was the kirpan, one of the five Sikh Kakars, that the victim, Alvar Singh, was carrying.
Singh is the fourth known victim of mob attacks fuelled by WhatsApp forwards claiming child abductors are on the prowl in the state. On 23 May, a mob in Bengaluru had lynched a man from Rajasthan on suspicion that he was child abductor, once again because of a similar WhatsApp forward.
“The mob even tore his turban and cut off his hair. He was beaten badly,” said a police official at Sedam.
Alvar Singh had come to Sedam on May 16 after he got a job as a driver at a cement factory. Alvar was at the Kodla market when some shoppers spotted his kirpan and began questioning him as to why he was carrying a knife, police said.
“Alvar Singh cannot speak Kannada and the people there did not understand what he was saying. The people then began accusing him of being a child abductor as they had seen these WhatsApp forwards about people from Bihar and Odisha coming to Karnataka, abducting children and harvesting their organs. By then around 50 people had gathered, and began thrashing Alvar Singh,” the police said.
An investigating office said that a few people in the market advised the angry mob to hand him over to the police instead. “Some people pacified the mob and they brought Alvar Singh to the police station. That’s when we knew he was not a child abductor but had come to work as the driver of an earth mover for a cement company,” the Sedam Police said.
However, the torture did not stop there. Alvar Singh, who was rushed to the government hospital near Sedam, was once again attacked by a mob at the hospital. The hospital staff immediately alerted the police. By the time the police arrived, the mob had dispersed, the investigating officer added.
The Sedam Police have registered a case under section 143 (unlawful assembly), 326 (causing grievous hurt) and 149 (rioting) against unknown persons. No arrests have been made yet.
Sources in the Gulbarga district Superintendent of Police’s office told TNM that this is not the first instance where a mob has brutally trashed people believing that people were child abductors.
As the incident gathered attention, Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy too appealed to the people to stop believing these fake forwards and not resort to violence.
I request Public not to pay heed to rumours on child kidnappers. News of child kidnapper gangs is false. I have asked police forces to be on strict vigil on this issue.I request the public to be responsible &their posts shouldn’t create panic&disturbance tothe peaceloving society
— CM of Karnataka (@CMofKarnataka) 26 May 2018
So far, no arrests have been made in the case, nor have the police identified any suspects.