The silence of Congressmen of Dakshina Kannada

By
Prof Narendra Nayak
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The silence of the Congressmen of Dakshina Kannada

The organizations seeking justice for Vinayak Baliga keep protesting as the true culprits behind his ghastly murder are still at large and one of them, Naresh Shenoy, had been moving heaven and earth to seek anticipatory bail for himself. There have already been four arrests in connection with this murder and one for aiding the absconder. The last one has managed to get bail but the other four are in judicial custody.

One of the main accused Naresh Shenoy is the founder of the Namo Brigade, which was allegedly responsible from bringing Narenda Modi to power and after his victory changed its name to Yuva Brigade. One of the arrested, Yajnesh is said to be a former driver of the present sitting MP, Naleen Kumar Katil of the BJP. It is also known that Naresh Shenoy was quite close to the sitting MP. All this should have provided ample ammunition for the ruling Congress party to take them to task and shout from the roof tops about the involvement of the BJP in this whole sordid affair of the murder of an activist of their party by a higher functionary.

But, amazingly the Congress brigade has chosen to remain silent and make pretense of a pretention of making noises! While a very junior trade union functionary made a statement about the BJP being behind the murder, the rest of them are strangely silent. The permanent gadfly of the party, ex-MP Janardhan Poojary of the loan mela fame who calls press conferences and makes utterances many times against his own party giving an impression that he is from the opposition party, has been silent on this issue. When queried about this strange silence in a press conference, he retorted that he is not a sacrificial cock that must raise his voice about everything! The district in charge minister B Ramanath Rai had assured the Baliga family of his “behind-the-scenes” support and that he has been doing his job silently for them. Despite all these claims, the main accused Srikanth and Naresh Shenoy are still at large.

Today, we had organized a protest march to the residence of the sitting MLA of the Mangalore South consituency, J R Lobo, to ask him as to what had happened to the promises that he made to the Baliga family. In fact, he had visited them a week or so after the murder and had assured them of his support and that he would fight for justice for them. Today, he happened to be out of station but the police had instructions to not let us get anywhere near his residence and about a hundred of us were arrested, taken to the Kadri police station and released later. Why should Lobo be afraid to raise his voice to demand justice for the victim’s family? Why are all ministers of this district silent about the Baliga murder? There are three ministers from Dakshina Kannada – Ramanath Rai, Abhaya Chandra Jain and U T Khader. None of them have made any moves to see that the police swing into action to arrest the accused. This is because of their impotence. Being comparatively lightweights, they have no voice to raise against injustice happening in their own district. There is absolutely no shame, no ideology, no commitment to principles of justice in politics. It is that all of them flock together to stage dramas to ‘entertain’ the voters. Perhaps these Congressmen are scared of losing power in the next election and then they would demand similar ‘considerations’ from the opposition? Is it the attitudes of the ‘higher-ups’ that makes them shut up? One has to go into the facts behind this case.

Recently, one website has made startling revelations that when one of the accused in this case, Manju Neershwalya, was interrogated by the police, he had confessed that a couple of crores had been transferred to a so called Godman to influence the Home Minister. It was also said that about Rs 50 lakhs had been used to bribe police officials in Mangalore. While these remain as allegations, the behavior of some of the politicians is to protect the accused since the needles of suspicion are pointing to their higher-ups. The link to one of the mutts can be suspected by the rage expressed when it was reported in the media that one Vishwanath Bhat, who was a functionary of the same, was reported as arrested when he had been called by the police for questioning! In a so called protest meeting, the Baliga family was accused of siding with evil forces to spoil the fair name of the mutt and the temple. But, when challenged to name these, the rage vanished and there was total silence! If Naresh Shenoy is given into the custody of police, it is feared that these names will all come up. It is also alleged that the sole representative of the GSB community in the Karnataka cabinet has also been approached for this purpose.

With such heavy weights backing vested interests, the small timers like a first time MLA and relatively lightweight ministers of the district have no courage to raise their voice. The health minister U T Khader would have raised hell if such a thing had happened to anyone from his community, but here it is a GSB who has been murdered and that too for questioning establishment committed malpractices. In fact, the whole case would have been buried miles deep but for the police commissioner of the Mangalore police, Chandrashekar. At present, it looks like he and a few trustworthy officers of his are keeping the case alive and have declared that they will bring the culprits to book. Hectic attempts have been made to obtain anticipatory bail for Naresh Shenoy and at the time of writing this, the case has been adjourned to the 7th of June.

Why this silence Congress ministers, elected and self nominated voices of the ruling congress party? Is it because of what a wag remarked when I spoke of this in Uttar Pradesh – kuch mat boliye saab yeh rajnithi ka hamam hai jahan sab nange hain! ( Don’t say anything sir this politics is a bathhouse in which all are naked!). It is time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the Baliga family. Are you listening members of the ruling party?

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Original r.pai
8 years ago

People have lost credibility due to their selective outrage. I wish we had more fair and honest people, politicians and activists. Oh well, my heart goes out to baliga family who have become pawns in this political game.

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