Puttur: Puttur rural police have arrested five persons for allegedly assaulting students, including girls, who were on the way to visit their classmate’s residence.
The incident took place on Wednesday at Renja near Bettampady in Puttur taluk.
A student at Sahyadri College in Mangaluru Abdul Shamir, son of Ibrahim, had invited his classmates to his house on the festival. Five girls and five boys arrived at Renja by bus and hired a rickshaw to reach Shamir’s home.
During the journey, when the rickshaw driver asked about their purpose of going, they said that they were going to Shamir’s home to have bakrid lunch. After learning this, the rickshaw driver, who not only refused to drop them at the address, also informed this to Sangh Parivar organisations allegedly. At the same time, Abdul Shamir, who was waiting to pick up his friends, had reportedly been abused and beaten up by a gang. The injured Shamir has been admitted to the Puttur Government Hospital.
A case was registered against residents Rukma, Satish Kurnappadi, Sheshappa Pittar, Rickshaw driver Ganesh, Kunhi, Duggappa, and Purushottama, who allegedly attacked and blocked the students, attempted to hurt communal sentiments and tried to spark communal violence.
The residents have expressed their anger and distrust against the attack on the students who were arrived to accept the invitation of Bakrid lunch.
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Patna, Oct 31: Former Union minister RCP Singh, who had to quit his cabinet berth after falling out of favour with JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar, on Thursday floated a new party "Aap Saabki Aawaz".
Talking to reporters here on the occasion, Singh said he chose the day for the launch as besides Dipawali, it was also the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel.
Incidentally, Patel is seen as a cultural icon by the powerful OBC community Kurmi, to which both Kumar and Singh belong, and the latter profusely thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for celebrating the birth anniversary on a grand scale.
Singh, the bureaucrat-turned-politician, who did not take any question, did not speak on his relations with the JD(U), which he had once headed but left in disgrace, and the BJP, which he joined a year ago, only to remain sidelined.
He, however, made it clear that his party was looking forward to contesting the Bihar assembly polls due next year and already had prospective candidates for "140 out of 243 seats".
Singh indirectly targeted Kumar by attacking the much-touted prohibition law in the state and highlighting the deterioration in government education institutions, "a far cry from our student days when we could crack the civil services, without reservation facility and with no coaching".
Hailing from the same Nalanda district as the Bihar chief minister, Singh was an Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer, and on central deputation, he first came in contact with Kumar, then the railway minister.
After assuming power in Bihar in 2005, Kumar, who was visibly impressed with the administrative acumen of Singh, persuaded the latter to come to Bihar as his principal secretary.
In 2010, Singh took voluntary retirement and joined JD(U) which helped him enjoy two consecutive terms in the Rajya Sabha.
However, in 2021, his induction into the Narendra Modi cabinet did not go down well with Kumar, who had by then grown suspicious that his protégé was planning a sabotage.
Singh was made to step down as national president of JD(U) within months of becoming the party president, and denial of another Rajya Sabha term a year later caused him to give up the ministerial berth.
By that time JD(U) rank and file was agog with rumours that Singh was plotting a split at the BJP's instance and served with a show cause notice over allegations of financial misappropriations that caused him to quit the party.
A year later, he joined the BJP which had by that time been dumped by Kumar who chose to realign a year later.
Later, Kumar's JD(U) emerged as a crucial ally of the BJP which is now short of a majority in Lok Sabha.