Shivaji statue desecration in Bengaluru,seven suspects detained

Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar

The Sadashivanagar police in Bengaluru have stepped up investigations to identify the miscreants who defaced a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji at at Bashyam Circle near Sankey Tank under Sadashivanagar police station limits on Friday.

The police suspect the statue was blackened in response to the burning of the Kannada flag in Maharashtra.

On Friday morning,a group of people gathered in front of the statue,shouting slogans.According to eyewitness,they threw ink on the statue and escaped.

The jurisdiction police arrived at the spot soon after.The statue was cleaned and personnel were deputed in the area to ensure there were no further incidents,said a police officer.

In the wake of the tension in Belagavi, jurisdictional police have been instructed to step up vigil and provide security cover to statues in other parts of the city as well.

A case has been registered based on a complaint filed by the Karnataka Maratha Welfare Association (KMWA)and investigations are on to identify those who were involved in the act.

After inspecting the spot and based on technical evidence and with other inputs the special team have detained one person identified as Naveen who first posted about the incident on social media with this other six persons have been detained in connection with the incident as it is alleged that Naveen the person who first posted the pic of defaced has link with miscreants who blackened the Shivaji statue.

The Sadashivanagar police are questioning them in an undisclosed place and further investigation is on and teams are on job to nab the miscreants and such act will not be tolerated across city commissioner of police,Kamal Pant warns miscreants who are disturbing peace and harmony in the city and ask the police personnel to be vigil and deploy additional police personnel near the statues in the city he added.