A day after Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on the floor of the Legislative Assembly that he had apologised to historian Ramachandra Guha for police manhandling, the latter on Thursday refuted the claim and said he had received neither a call nor an apology from the Home Minister.
In a tweet on Thursday, Mr. Guha said: “The Home Minister of Karnataka has claimed on the floor of the State Assembly that he apologised to me by phone for the manhandling by the Bengaluru police on 19th December 2019. This is false. I received no such call or apology.”
In another tweet, he said: “Even if such an apology had been offered, I would have rejected it. The imposition of Section 144 was illegal [as the Karnataka High Court has since held] and I was proud to be one of thousands of peaceful protesters who defied the State’s arbitrary action on that day.”
Mr. Bommai, while apologising to the former Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar for being issued a notice by the Mangaluru police when he tried to enter the city, also said he had personally apologised to Mr. Guha. His said this during his reply to the discussion on the series of developments in the State after the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) was passed, which included the death of two persons in Mangaluru in police firing and the police using prohibitory orders to muzzle anti-CAA protests in the State.
On December 19, the police had pushed around Mr. Guha who had joined the peaceful protest in front of the Town Hall in the city, which was in defiance of prohibitory order imposed by the police.
