A Manipuri youth was beaten up by a man identified as Sanketh in the presence of a beat police constable at Lakshmipura near Ulsoor on Tuesday afternoon.
The youth filed a complaint with the jurisdictional Indiranagar police. But,Sanketh reportedly barged into the complainant’s house the next day and threatened him with dire consequences for approaching the police.
In his complaint, Ngamkholien Haokip (28), who works for a brewery and is joint secretary of the Thadou Students’ Association, Bengaluru (TSA-B), said that he was assaulted by Sanketh when he was about to head out to work. “I noticed Sanketh sitting on my motocycle and asked him to get down. Taking objection to this, he pounced on me and assaulted me,” he said.
Soon curious onlookers gathered even as Sanketh reportedly pushed Haokip’s vehicle down and kicked him when he tried to pick it up. Haokip was injured and the beat constables, who were passing by asked Sanketh to walk away instead of helping him. “The constables asked everybody who had gathered to disperse as if nothing had happened,” he said.
According to Haokip, he had to turn to his friends for help as neither his neighbours nor the landlord came to his rescue. His friends, including TSA-B president T. Michael Lamjathang, shifted him to a private hospital. They later went to Indiranagar police station and filed a complaint. Instead of extending necessary help, the police officials allegedly tried to play down the incident and dismiss the incident as a “minor one”. “The police asked us to bring Sanketh to the station. That is not our job. It is for the police to ensure that such incidents do not recur,” Mr. Michael told The Hindu .
Mr. Michael said that though they had informed the police about Sanketh threatening Haokip, the police had not initiated any action. “It was then that we approached the Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) and brought the issue to his notice,” he said.
However, DCP Satish Kumar said Sanketh was arrested on Wednesday and remanded to judicial custody.
