Bengaluru: As protests rage in Karnataka over a Hindu woman having been stabbed to death by a Muslim man, with accusations of ‘love jihad’ fanning the flames, the mother of the accused has said he was in a romantic relationship with the woman for about a year — trying to dispel allegations that she was murdered for rejecting his advances.
Mumtaz, mother of 23-year-old college dropout and now murder accused, Fayaz Khondunaik, told the media Saturday that her son was in a romantic relationship with Neha Hiremath, daughter of Congress’s Hubballi Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) corporator Niranjan Hiremath. The 23-year-old first year MCA student was stabbed to death Thursday by Fayaz at Hubbali’s BVB College.
“Both of them were in love, I knew about it a year ago,” Mumtaz said. She claimed it was Neha who first approached Fayaz because he ‘used to do well at bodybuilding competitions’.
“He would come home and tell me he would often be approached by girls… he mentioned a girl named Neha,” she said. Mumtaz maintained that her son should face the law.
The incident sparked protests across the state, with several Hindutva outfits and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) terming it as a case of ‘love jihad’. The BJP also cited the incident to corner the Congress government in the state over its handling of law and order.
Meanwhile, Neha’s father Niranjan Hiremath has alleged that she was killed because she had rejected Fayaz’s advances. He reacted sharply to the public apology by Fayaz’s mother, saying that there is no point asking for forgiveness now.
Mumtaz also claimed that her son was suffering from depression since dropping out of college, to which Hiremath responded: “Had they (the parents) told us or made us aware of Fayaz’s mental state, we could have taken precautions and kept our daughter safe. How appropriate is it now to ask for forgiveness?”
Polling in half of Karnataka’s 28 Lok Sabha seats is set to take place on 26 April, while the remaining 14 seats will go to the polls in the third phase (7 May). Against this backdrop, several BJP leaders called the incident a result of Congress’s ‘appeasement politics’.
Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister and BJP candidate from Hubballi-Dharwad, accused the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government of trying to defend such actions.
“The way in which this government is behaving… when Pakistan Zindabad slogan was raised in the Vidhana Soudha, how did they react? And, how did they act when Hanuman Chalisa was pronounced (played) in Bengaluru? What did they call terrorists in Rameshwaram Cafe? It appears that the government is taking things casually,” Joshi told media Saturday.
He alleged that the Congress government in the state “tried to support the culprits, protect the accused because it is their vote bank”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, made a reference to the incident while addressing a public meeting in Bengaluru Saturday. “The Congress, the kind of thinking it is promoting, that is very dangerous. Here, there are attacks on our daughters, bombs are exploding in our markets, there are attacks for listening to bhajans. These are not ordinary incidents.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also read: ‘Dynasts’ are contesting in over half of Karnataka’s seats, Congress to JDS & BJP
Print at its best – what about victim family.? You highlighted accused mother in heading.