K'taka: Woman pushed to suicide by moral policing, BJP Yuva head arrested
Bengaluru: BJP District Yuva Morcha President, Anil, was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the suicide of a 20-year-old woman in Chikmagalur, according to news agency ANI.
The woman hung herself on Saturday, after a group of men from a local right-wing organisation barged into her home and heckled her in front of her parents.
The alleged heckling was because the girl was friendly with a Muslim man from her college and used to regularly chat with him on Facebook.
In one such chat, she had written "I like Muslims," the police said.
The right-wing group had initially warned her on Facebook.
On Saturday, a group of five local right-wingers who the woman named in her suicide note barged into the woman's house around 6 pm.
They told her parents that their daughter's friendship with the Muslim man was a case of "love jihad", a term used by right-wing groups accusing Muslim men of drawing Hindu women into relationships and converting them.
They also hurled insults at the girl and her parents and threatened her to sever ties with her Muslim friend, the police informed.
After they left, the woman hung herself in her room.
City police chief K Annamalai said that one of the men named in the suicide note has been arrested, while the police are looking for the remaining four.
"Police would not spare anyone responsible for mentally torturing the young woman and forcing her to commit suicide," he said.
Assembly polls in Karnataka will be held later this year and in its wake, reports of moral policing and communal violence are becoming more frequent in the state.
Earlier this month, Karnataka police was itself accused of moral policing --- beating up a young man and harassing his female friend --- near Puutur, in the coastal district of Dakshin Kannada.
In a video message that was widely shared online, the young woman said they were targeted because they belonged to different religions.
Last week, a Muslim man was attacked in retaliation against the attack on a BJP supporter, the police said. Four people were arrested for the attack on Basheer Ahmed, a food-stall owner, who died on Sunday morning.
