A mob assaulted four Dalit youths suspecting them to be “kidnappers” at Aralimatti village in Gokak taluk on Wednesday.
Mahesh Nagaraj and his three friends were tied to poles and assaulted by an angry mob that included people from different villages. Mahesh, who received serious injuries on his head, has been admitted to a hospital in Belagavi.
Arun Kumar Narasappa, Vijay Basavaraj and Ramesh Huligeppa were treated as outpatients in Gokak. They are in the 20-25 age group and hail from Raichur city.
The police said that Mahesh’s friends were trying to help him marry a girl he was in love with from the village, and the mob failed to understand that.
Mahesh was in love with a Dalit girl from a nearby village. She used to visit him in Raichur as she stayed with a relative there a few months ago. Her parents, however, did not approve of this relationship and decided to arrange her marriage with a local young man in Gokak. The marriage was to be held on Sunday. After learning about this, Mahesh and his friends rushed to her village to take her away from a marriage that she had not given her consent to.
The victims came to her village, picked her up and started towards Gokak. A few minutes later, Vijay, who was driving, got into an altercation with a motorcycle rider who came his way. The rider saw that there were four young men and a girl in the van and got suspicious. He called his friends who gave a chase to the van.
They also went on making phone calls to acquaintances in the next village on the road. After a distance of about 5 km, they way laid the van and forced the youth to get off it. They asked the girl to go back to her village. Her pleas that they were her friends who were trying to rescue her from an unwanted marriage went unheard.
The youth were tied to cement electric poles and beaten up. Police officers, who got wind of this, rushed to the spot and rescued the youth.
