Two unidentified men attacked a 28-year-old supervisor of a granite store in Gokul Nagar in Kulai off the National Highway between Mangalore and Udupi on Monday. This comes a week after a 28-year-old shopkeeper was attacked in the area and the police have not ruled out a link between the two incidents.
The Surathkal police said Sudershan of Kulai had been working as a supervisor in a new granite store, Sri Madhav Marbels and Granites, for the past three months. On Monday around noon, two persons came to his cabin pretending as customers and assaulted him.
One of them tried hitting Sudershan with an iron rod, but he warded it off with his hand. Then the second assaulter hit Sudershan on his head with an iron pipe. A colleague of Sudershan, who came to the store a few minutes after the assault, took Sudershan first to a private hospital in Mukka from where he was moved to a private hospital near Kuntikana.
Sudershan, writhing in pain, found it hard to explain the sequence of events to The Hindu . Keeping his eyes closed, he said he did not know the assaulters.
Police Commissioner R. Hitendhra said the police was looking into all angles into the assault. “We cannot rule out possibility of involvement of a particular group in this attack,” he said.
On January 20 four persons attacked Kalandar Shakeel, an employee of a superstore in Sannanagar in Kulai. Police found the involvement of four teenagers from a Hindutva group in the attack.
Meanwhile, the Surathkal police on Tuesday arrested Shakeel for allegedly being in the group that created ruckus before the house of Anil, an accused in the assault of Izaz Ahmed on January 13. The police questioned Shakeel over the assault of Sudershan.
‘Act against officer’The DYFI has asked Police Commissioner R. Hitendhra for action against Surthakal police inspector Nataraj for his “failure to take right steps” with regard to the assaults in the last three weeks.
