Udupi: Hindutva activist Pradeep Poojari arrested again in rape case after bail release
Udupi: Police from the Udupi Women’s Police Station have arrested a Hindu Jagarana Vedike activist in connection with a rape case involving a young woman who was assaulted in an isolated area.
The accused has been identified as Pradeep Poojary (26), a member of the Hindu Jagarana Vedike’s Nayarkodu unit in Perdur. He had allegedly been harassing a woman to marry him, and after she refused, she filed a complaint at the Hiriyadka Police Station. He was arrested earlier in this connection but was later released on bail.
According to the complaint, fuelled by the same hostility, on November 29, Pradeep intercepted the woman while she was walking through an isolated location and again pressured her to marry him. When she refused, he allegedly strangled her in a threatening manner and committed rape.
The woman informed her family, who subsequently filed a complaint with the Udupi Women’s Police Station. Police registered the case, arrested the accused, and produced him before the court. The court has remanded him to judicial custody.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
