Bengaluru: A couple was brutally thrashed by six men who broke into their Karnataka lodge room, accusing them of the “crime” of being together despite having different religious beliefs. This was a shocking case of assault and invasion of privacy. Days after two cousins were beaten up in the state after being mistaken for an interfaith couple, videos of the assault have surfaced.
The six men are shown in videos taken by the attackers themselves, which suggests that they were looking to gain notoriety, waiting outside the lodge in Hanagal Taluk, Haveri District. They take note of the room number, knock, and then stand by. The woman tries to cover her face with a burqa, but they storm in when a man opens the door and goes straight to her.
Muttering expletives, the men hit the woman so hard that she falls to the floor. The man is also assaulted and then caught by two or three of the attackers when he tries to run out of the room. One of the attackers corners the woman near the bed while another hits her and drags her to the floor again.
Another video, which appears to be shot outside the lodge after the attack, shows the woman desperately attempting to cover her face but the men lift her hijab and film her.
The couple filed a complaint at the Hanagal police station and two out of the six men, who are from the minority community, have been arrested.
“The incident happened at Hanagal’s Nalhara Cross on January 7. The six defendants, all members of underrepresented groups, are accused of abducting a woman, outraging her modesty, and attempting to murder her. Four of the six have been located, and two of them have been taken into custody,” a police officer stated.
In the other incident on Tuesday, seven men were arrested for beating up two cousins in Belagavi after mistaking them for an interfaith couple. Police had said the men, who were also from the minority community, continued to beat up the boy and the girl even after they said they were cousins.
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