MYSURU: Fresh videos related to the Udayagiri violence show that a mob of hundreds of people gathered in front of the police station within minutes and the handful of policemen could have faced grave danger.
The videos show DCP Muthuraju, atop a police jeep, appealing to the mob for calm, but the mobsters would have nothing of it. Any misstep by the police could have resulted in a DJ Halli-KG Halli-like situation, sources said. The videos show the mob over over a thousand people trying to barge into the police station and vandalise it.
In a related development, a voice message is doing the rounds on social media advising people of the Muslim community, who had put up pictures of the violence on their social media handles, to take them down and warning that the police are monitoring such accounts.
The voice message was shared in WhatsApp groups to over 50,000 people after several people posted images with captions such as ‘Islamic power’ and ‘Muslim power’.
Meanwhile, the accused Satish, who had allegedly put up a controversial social media post which triggered the violence, applied for bail on Friday. A court, which heard the application on Saturday, post the plea for further hearing on February 17 after public prosecutor Savitha sought more time to present arguments.
The lawyer for the accused, H M Bhaskar, alleged that the police have not produced any evidence that the social media post had provoked communal tensions. The police have also seized the phone from which the post was uploaded and have registered the case under Section 299 of BNS (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) under pressure, he claimed.