Nine years after the country witnessed the horrific incidence wherein a mob beat up young women outside a pub in the coastal city of Mangaluru, about 350km from Bengaluru, a local court on Monday acquitted all 30-people involved in the attack.
“30 people were acquitted today. This is a victory for the truth and the courts have given us justice,” said Pramod Muthalik, Chief of Hindu fringe group Sri Rama Sene which carried out the attack.
The acquittals have caused immense outrage on social media and other platforms. The entire episode had been captured on video and was televised for many days during 2009. Yet the court has granted the bail due to lack of evidence.
On 24 June 2009, a group of around 25 to 30 self-proclaimed vigilantes barged into Amnesia Pub in Mangaluru and beat up young men and women dancing there.
Muthalik said that the group had done nothing wrong and the incident had brought in a lot of awareness about the growing pub, bar and club culture.
Sparking wide spread discontentment, the Citizens Forum for Mangalore Development has come forward and issued a statement against the court order. “We the Citizens Forum for Mangalore Development are severely disappointed by the wholesale acquittal of all the accused in the Amnesia Pub Attack of 2009. This outcome is entirely unexpected and we had been hoping for the strictest punishment for the guilty as per the law,” the forum said in a statement on Monday. They demanded that the state government appeal against the judgement and bring the perpetrators to book.
The incident had brought to light the extreme cases of moral policing carried out by self-styled protectors of culture in the country.