The police in Mangaluru burst teargas shells inside the hospital and its premises on Falnir Road where the injured in Thursday’s violent incidents had been admitted, the Congress party has alleged.
Addressing press persons in Mangaluru, K. Harish Kumar, president, Dakshina Kannada District Congress Committee (DCC) and also MLC, claimed that tear gas had entered the ICU of the hospital and it had affected patients and many others in the hospital.
Police have also beaten up the persons who had come with the injured and had gathered in the hospital on Thursday and damaged the property of the hospital by breaking the door glasses, he alleged.
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Video footage, said to be from CCTV cameras at Highland Hospital, have been widely shared which show two police personnel trying to open a ward by kicking it and using lathis. Another footage shows policemen charging at people in the lobby. This has drawn widespread condemnation in Mangaluru and elsewhere.
Speaking at Mangaluru, Mr. Kumar said, “It is a police atrocity. We condemn it.” The MLC said that the lathi charge, lobbing of tear gas shells and firing in Bunder area which resulted in the death of two persons were uncalled for. "The dead were innocents," he claimed.
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The DCC president said that there were many protests in several parts of the country against the Citizens (Amendment) Act, 2019. But no where police have fired and killed people.
“The government should protect the people and not killing them,” he said.
Mithun M Rai, a Congress leader, said that police burst tear gas shells in the hospital premises between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. “several times”.
The ruling BJP government in the State is solely responsible for the violent incidents in the city, he said adding that the violent incidents are being reported only in the BJP ruled states in the country.
B. Ramanath Rai, former Home Minister of the State and also former minister in-charge of Dakshina Kannada, said that there was no need to clamp prohibitory orders in the State. It prompted people to resort to protests across the State.
Mr. Rai said that usually while handling any sensitive issues police first issue prohibitory orders and then impose curfew and resort to firing as a last resort. But in Thursday’s case police have imposed curfew after firing. “I don’t understand this,” he said.