Moral policing: 4 men assault autorickshaw driver at Dharmasthala in Karnataka

He was allegedly dragged out of the autorickshaw and abused for taking a woman from another community to Dharmasthala.

In yet another moral policing incident in the coastal belt, four men allegedly assaulted an autorickshaw driver, from the Muslim community, who was returning to Ujire after dropping a passenger, who is a woman from another community, at the KSRTC bus stand in Dharmasthala on the night of August 2.

In the complaint to Dharmasthala police, the driver Mohammed Ashiq said a woman hired his autorickshaw to travel from Ujire to Dharmasthala on the night of August 2. When he was returning after dropping the woman near Dharmasthala KSRTC bus stand, four men allegedly stopped his autorickshaw near Dharmasthala.

He was allegedly dragged out of the autorickshaw and abused for taking a woman from another community to Dharmasthala. They allegedly assaulted him before leaving the place.

Ashiq is undergoing treatment at the Government Hospital in Belthangady, police said.

Based on his compliant, the Dharmasthala police registered a case under Sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 341 (wrongful restraint), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. The police are questioning some people.

The moral policing incident in Dharmasthala is the fourth one reported in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts in the last seven days, and the seventh incident reported since the formation of the Congress government in May. It is the ninth incident reported in the undivided Dakshina Kannada so far in 2023.

Dakshina Kannada district in-charge minister Dinesh Gundu Rao went on record in Mangaluru on August 1 that communal forces were engaging in moral policing to tarnish the image of the Congress government and also to tarnish the image of coastal districts, including Dakshina Kannada.