Man held in Karnataka for raping Russian girl at Goa resort
Panaji(PTI): The Goa Police have arrested a man from his home town in neighbouring Karnataka for allegedly raping a 12-year-old Russian girl at a resort in Arambol in North Goa, where he worked as a room attendant, an official said on Thursday.
The accused, Ravi Lamani (28), a married man, was arrested by a team of Pernem police on May 10 at Gadag in Karnataka for the incident of sexual assault that had happened on May 6. The mother of the victim had lodged a complaint on May 9, he said.
Talking to PTI, inspector of Pernem police station, Vikram Naik, said the woman complained that her minor daughter was sexually assaulted in the swimming pool of the resort and later inside the hotel room by the accused, who works as a room attendant at the resort.
"As per the complaint, the incident took place when the girl's mother had gone out to fetch some necessary items from a nearby market in Arambol, leaving her daughter behind in the swimming pool," he said.
Naik said the accused had fled after the incident.
"But within 24 hours of receiving the complaint, the accused was arrested after he was traced in Gadag," he said.
Lamani was booked under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 376 (rape), section 8 of the Goa Children's Act and sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Naik said.
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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.
