On Thursday, a 19-year-old student was assaulted, stripped, and paraded half-naked, holding Dr BR Ambedkar’s photo in Karnataka’s Kalaburagi as he refused to attend ‘Ambedkar Puja (worship)’ in his hostel citing personal reasons.
The victim is a science student at N.V. College and stays at the city’s government-run post-metric dormitory.
Neelakanth Rathod, the victim’s father, submitted a lawsuit alleging that late on 24th January some of the students had requested the hostel residents to come to the weekly Ambedkar Puja which is observed on Sundays. However, his son stated that he couldn’t make it to the program because of other obligations. This infuriated the students who along with others from adjacent colleges began to interrogate him.
The video of the instance has gone viral on social media.
A case was registered against 15-20 hostel boys, who forced the victim to walk about town in a half-naked state. The was case lodged under Section 341 (wrongful restraint), Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), Section 505(2) (public mischief), Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.
