The death of two people during the police firing in Mangaluru on Thursday brings back memories of a similar tragedy that unfolded in 2008, when two agitating farmers in Haveri, who were demanding fertilizers, succumbed to police bullets. Back then, too, B.S. Yediyurappa was in the Chief Minister’s chair.
Those privy to meetings following the Mangaluru incident say Mr. Yediyurappa was deeply unhappy with the firing in Mangaluru and even referred to the firing in Haveri, saying that he was “let down by the police twice”.
“He had, in fact, directed the Police Department not to [fire] in both Haveri and Mangaluru,” one of his close associates said. On December 19, on the eve of the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests, Mr. Yediyurappa had told reporters that he had asked the police to exercise restraint and not indulge in “even lathicharge”.
Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah took a dig at this, saying that if the police fired at protesters despite the Chief Minister’s directions not to even cane them, it only showed that the BJP leader was “not in control.” He went on to claim that leaders from Delhi and Sangh Parivar were ruling the State by proxy.
Meanwhile, former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy tweeted, “He killed farmers during his previous tenure, and now two people. He must own up responsibility and apologise.”
A retired top police officer, who worked closely with Mr. Yediyurappa, said that while the personnel on the ground will be in an “emotional state”, a decision to fire is taken holistically. “Even the last man in the force needs to be aware of the mindset of the man leading the State. In both these cases, there seems to have been transmission losses in this communication.”
But with two such instances in Mr. Yediyurappa’s career as Chief Minister, human rights activists say it cannot be made light of. “If he was against the use of force, he should have ensured action against the policemen who killed the farmers in Haveri in 2008. Instead, the case was buried with a judicial inquiry commission and he defended the police action. This inculcates a culture in the police. The Chief Minister has only himself to blame this time if the police did not take his directions seriously,” said Mathews Philip, executive director, South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring.
The Siddaramaiah government had rejected the report of the Justice K. Jagannath Shetty Commission, formed by Mr. Yediyurappa to probe the Haveri firing, in 2016. The report had termed the violence “politically motivated”. However, the Congress government ordered no further probe and no police officer was held accountable. Incidentally, a protester was killed during Mr. Siddaramaiah’s tenure in 2015 when a cane farmer committed suicide in Belagavi during the winter session. But the police had no role in it.
Mr. Philip argued that Mr. Yediyurappa was making a mistake now by not ordering a credible inquiry into the Mangaluru violence.
