Congress leader and former Minister D.K. Shivakumar has sought to know the need for imposing ban orders under Section 144 of the Cr.PC, which he said exacerbated the situation, in Mangaluru during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
Reacting to the videos released by the Mangaluru police showing protesters pelting stones at them, he demanded to know if the situation warranted shooting to kill.
“I do not blame the Mangaluru police. The orders for police action came from the Karnataka government and the Home Minister,” he said. “Without the government direction Section 144 could not have been imposed at the first place,” he told reporters in Bengaluru.
‘People’s resistance’
On the BJP blaming the Congress for the violent turn of incidents, he said, it was resistance by the people and it had to be handled sensitively.
Questioning the authenticity of the videos of Mangaluru violence released by the police, the former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Tuesday asked what action the State government had taken in this regard.
In a series of tweets, he said, “Why is the State government releasing the videos of stones being carried during the protest now? Who has been arrested in this connection? How many vehicles have been seized? Are the videos showing stones being carried in vehicles of the Mangaluru violence or of elsewhere?”
In another tweet, he asked, “How did the BJP which has made Mangaluru its communal laboratory kill two innocents and why? Why did the government that has claimed that arsonists were shot announce compensation?”
He said he does not support violent protests, and added, “As a member of the Opposition party, he cannot keep quite when the police conspire to disrupt law and order.”
