On December 29, 2023, Shrikanth Pujari, an autorickshaw driver, was arrested in connection with the violence that followed the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Angry about the arrest, which was made just over a month before the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindutva organisations such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad launched a campaign against the arrest of a “Ram Bhakt” and “kar sevak”. The Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, R. Ashok, accused the Congress government of indulging in “appeasement politics” by reviving a three-decades-old case pertaining to the Ram Janmabhoomi agitations. The protesting groups refused to buy the explanation of the police that Mr. Pujari’s arrest was part of a routine procedure to clear long-pending cases. Instead, they asked, why now? They alleged that the arrest was a targeted attack on “Ram Bhakts” to dissuade them from being part of the inauguration at Ayodhya and the local activities planned ahead of it.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah took to X to release a list of 16 cases against Mr. Pujari involving the sale of illicit liquor, gambling, and rioting. Justifying the arrest, the Chief Minister also released a list of 36 people arrested in connection with 26 other long-pending cases in the Hubballi-Dharwad commissionerate limits. He said that the BJP was getting “exposed” by defending a criminal who was “using religion as a shield.” Local Congress MLA (Hubballi-Dharwad East) Prasad Abbayya accused the BJP of “standing in support of a history-sheeter” and trying to build a Hindu-Muslim narrative out of an arrest which had followed the normal procedure of law.
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