Growing political pressure from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has forced the Karnataka government to direct the state Crime Investigation Department (CID) to investigate the murder of Neha, 23, a college student of Hubli, allegedly by her classmate, Fayaz Khondunaik. A Special Court is also being set up to ensure a speedy trial of the case.

Neha, the daughter of Niranjan Hiremath, Congress Councillor of Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation, was brutally stabbed on her college campus last week. The accused who reportedly fled from the scene, was arrested subsequently. Neha was pursuing a course in Master of Computer Application.

For the BJP, this murder case is the much needed ammunition they needed to corner the Congress ahead of Parliamentary polls. The BJP has charged the Congress with “promoting minority appeasement and ignoring growing cases of ‘Love Jihad’”.

Above all, the ruling party’s initial failure to take the case seriously, considering that the daughter of its own partyman was murdered, has not gone down well with the Congress cadres too. This is also something that the BJP is seeking to exploit in this election.

The murder comes on the back of other incidents including a bomb blast in a cafe in Bengaluru, involving sections of the minority community, according to recent reports on the investigation by the central authorities.

The recent fight between the youth of the two communities over shouting of “Jai Shri Ram” slogans, has given BJP the fuel it needed against the Congress on poll eve.

This explains the state-wide protests that the BJP has now launched over the issue. It has laid special emphasis on the region popularly known as Mumbai-Karnataka, a major support base of the BJP. This area includes some of the important Lingayat dominated districts of Uttara Kannada, Belagavi, Hubli-Dharwad, Vijayapura, Bagalkot, Gadag and Haveri.

Significantly, Niranjan Hiremath had publicly called his party out for denying the ‘Love Jihad’ angle. However, senior ministers of the state government had sought to emphasise that “the victim and the accused were in a relationship” and therefore, the murder was not a case of ‘Love Jihad’.

This was enough to infuriate the Lingayat community, and the BJP, even though subsequently, Mumtaz, the mother of the accused, also claimed that Neha and her son were in a relationship. According to her, Neha had taken Fayaz’s phone number after he won the ‘University Blue’ title at a bodybuilding competition. Mumtaz claimed that after this the two started interacting with each other.

At the same time, Mumtaz said that she understood the pain and sorrow of parents who lose their children. “I request all, including Neha’s parents, to forgive us,” Mumtaz said.

Neha’s mother has contested Mumtaz’s claims saying that her daughter and Fayaz were just classmates. She added that Fayaz “was chasing” Neha and she did not like it.

If this was not all, Niranjan asserted that an attempt was being made to convert his daughter and at least three to four persons were involved in this act. His disappointment, however, was that his own party did not stand behind him.

Niranjan was promptly supported by the Lingayat seers and the Akhila Bharat Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha. They condemned the murder and urged the Congress to take strict action against the accused. Collectively, these factors forced the Siddaramaiah government to institute a CID probe.

Muslim organisations like the Dharwad based Anjuman-e-Islam, organised a bandh on April 22 to protest against Neha’s death and show solidarity with the Hiremath family.

According to Anjuman-e-Islam, members of the community put up “Justice for Neha” stickers at their shops. Ismail Tamatgar, the organisation’s president of the said, “our community will not tolerate any kind of inhuman activity, irrespective of caste, creed and religion”.

Shopkeepers from the community added that “we ,as human beings, are ashamed of such acts. It is high time to unite”. A group of Muslim women in Dharwad also protested against Neha’s murder.

The gesture was appreciated by everyone and proved instrumental in ensuring that there was no communal disturbance in the state, and in Hubli-Dharwad in particular.

Meanwhile, the BJP has upped its ante following tits president, J. P. Nadda’s visit to the Hiremath’s family where Niranjan is learnt to have requested for a CBI probe into Neha’s murder. The father is convinced that there is more to his daughter’s murder than meets the eye.

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