Bengaluru: At first, it was a video of an Indian Air Force (IAF) officer making a startling claim, that he and his wife were assaulted and harassed for being ‘outsiders’ in Bengaluru.
His face covered in blood, Wing Commander Shiladitya Bose claimed he and his wife, Squadron Leader Madhumita Dutta, were harassed and assaulted in broad daylight by an unknown biker while on their way to the airport.
“A bike came from behind and stopped our car … the guy started abusing me in Kannada. When they saw the DRDO sticker on my car and said ‘You DRDO people’, (and) they abused my wife and I couldn’t bear it. The moment I got out of my car, the biker hit me with a key on my forehead, and there was blood,” he said in a video doing the rounds on social media.
But hours after this incident triggered debate on the ‘domicile versus outsider’ debate and ‘language militancy’, CCTV footage has emerged in which the IAF officer is seen brutally assaulting the biker. At least four videos, purportedly of the IAF officer, show Bose assaulting the biker while onlookers make futile attempts to stop him.
In the two videos shared he shared, Bose had alleged that it was the biker who assaulted him with keys and stones.
Multiple calls to Madhumita Dutta went unanswered.
Devaraj, DCP (East Bengaluru), meanwhile, told news agency ANI, “.. It is a clear-cut case of road rage, which is very common in Bengaluru. Both of them could have avoided this … When the lady officer, Madhumita Das, was driving, this guy was coming from the opposite direction… This was the root cause… Then the officer got out of the car, and both of them had a fight. One guy, Vikas Kumar, has been arrested…”
According to the IAF officer, his wife, Squadron Leader Madhumita, was dropping him to the airport. Bose’s father is scheduled to undergo an operation in Kolkata.
“While commuting to the bus stop, one man on Bike number, KA53 EA 528 was rash driving and almost about hit our car. Therefore, I was driving and looked at him. He crossed our car and we moved ahead. However, he turned the bike and had come back. He stopped the bike in front of our car suddenly. He got down and from the front window he started abusing me and hit my husband continuously,” Madhumita said in her police complaint. She added that a “mob” assaulted the couple and she too was injured while trying to save Bose.
They further alleged that the assailant kept assaulting Bose, repeatedly stating that this was ‘Kannada land’ and the officers were ‘DRDO people’, indicating that the two IAF officers were outsiders in Bengaluru.
DRDO has several large establishments in eastern Bengaluru and also gated residential areas. The public has access to pass through the residential areas only in the morning hours and security demand identification post 8 pm.
The incident has sparked outrage and fuelled the intensifying language debate in Bengaluru or the ‘domicile versus outsider’ argument. There have been incidents which have spilt over from the virtual world into the streets of Bengaluru.
The Print earlier reported on the growing ‘language militancy’ in India’s IT capital, where sections of people were using Kannada to deflect attention from the actual incident or clash. There have also been cases of hostility towards non-Kannadigas and even discrimination against people on either side of the pro-Kannada and pro-Hindi debate.
Bose said in a second video that people who gathered around the assailant egged him on.
“The shocking thing that the local people … Kannada people … everybody was watching. There were aged people who were telling the person who had done the crime that you were wrong and get away from here. But other locals, they were supporting him, they were holding my hands. That guy even bit me on my finger. It’s atrocious,” he said.
This time, it appeared that he had been treated for his injuries.
“If I had the capacity, I would have done anything to him. I was larger in size and power … the shocking thing was he came prepared. He had keys in his hands, was wearing a helmet and wanted to aggravate the situation. God knows what would have happened if my wife was alone,” he said, adding that he was worried for his wife and child who are in Bengaluru.
This is an updated version of the report
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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The CCTV clearly shows that it is the Wing Commander who is beating and assaulting the Biker. Yet you have not written about it in your entire narrative. You have written fully only the story told by Mr. Bose and his wife. This is not correct and is against the basics of fair reporting.
The Kannadigas have a habit of ganging up and assaulting “outsiders” whenever there is any heated altercation.
The funny thing is they consider all outsiders as north-Indian Hindi-speaking people. That there are people in India who do not speak Hindi and neither belong to north-India is lost on most Kannadigas.