Will form govt in Karnataka within 24 hours if BJP wins 22 LS seats: BSY

Bengaluru, Jan 22: The suspected man in planting of a live bomb at the Mangaluru International Airport surrendered before the DG and IG of Karnataka Police, Neelamani Raju, here on Wednesday, police sources said.

The accused was identified as Aditya Rao, a resident of Udupi.

The accused was taken for questioning by the Halasurugate Police, where he was being interrogated intensively, the sources further said.

According to them, he confessed that he planted an explosive device at Mangaluru Airport on Monday said that it was an act of revenge for denying him an employment by the Kempegowda International Airport Limited (KIAL).

He was arrested by the Bengaluru police in the past for making a hoax call to the police stating that a bomb had been planted at the Bengaluru Airport.

Karnataka Home minister Basavaraj Bommai told the media that 'the Bengaluru police have taken the custody of Aditya Rao, who is being subjected for a thorough interrogation'.

The Mangaluru police was also likely to join the Bengaluru police into the investigation, the sources added.

Also Read: Udupi’s Aditya Rao arrested for issuing bomb threats to Airport, railway station

Udupi, Mar 1: Acting on credible information, Udupi district police arrested five persons and seized 1.35 kg of crude gold worth Rs 56.99 lakh from the possession of the accused, custom department said on Sunday.

A case has been registered against four people at Kundapur and one at Byndoor on charges of gold smuggling. The accused were transporting gold from Calicut to Bhatkal, informed Joannes George, joint Commissioner of Customs.

Off these five accused, four persons were held at Kundapur, while other at Byndoor on Saturday evening.

The Karnataka BJP, which faced action on Twitter earlier this month over incendiary tweets, this time has passed the blame of Sangh Parivar sponsored Delhi violence to the victims.

In an insensitive tweet on Friday, it dubbed the protests against the notorious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as "fake" and added that the violence that followed was "the most well-planned assault on the Idea of India," in an apparent attempt to portray the victims as villains.

The handle, notorious for tweets targeting Muslims, blamed the clashes that erupted in Delhi between people demonstrating for and against the CAA on "so called 'Peacefuls'" - a known right-wing slur for Muslims.

ZERO - Number of Indians who lost their Citizenship due to the #CAA.

40+ - Number of Indians who lost their lives due to the #CAARiots.

The fake protests against CAA and subsequent riots by the so called Peacefuls are the most well planned assault on the "Idea of India."

— BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) February 28, 2020

Many people on social media called out the tweet for misleading people and covering up the role of Delhi BJP leader Kapil Mishra's provocative speech for triggering the violence or the failure of the Delhi Police, which reports to the former BJP chief and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in controlling the riots.

Earlier this month, the Karnataka BJP had tweeted a video of Muslim women standing in queue to vote in the Delhi elections, showing their voter ID cards, with the snarky caption: "Keep the documents safe, you will need to show them again during NPR (National Population Register) exercise."

Soon after, the party unit's Twitter handle was blocked by the social media platform for 24 hours after many accused it of encouraging Islamophobia.

NPR has been widely criticised by opposition parties as a precursor to the government's planned NRC or National Register of Citizens which intends to make Indians prove their citizenship with documents that many poor or illiterate do not possess.

Many fear that combined with the already imposed CAA - which promises citizenship to only non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - the NRC can be used to make millions of Muslims stateless.

The government has denied the allegation and said the CAA only intends to help those who have faced religious persecution. In recent weeks, it has gone back on its rhetoric on the NRC which was announced by Amit Shah in parliament as "it will certainly happen".

The CAA, which was cleared by parliament in December, has triggered deadly protests in the country which left at least 25 dead till Sunday. Since then, at least 42 more people have been killed as large-scale violence erupted in northeast Delhi and hundreds of homes and shops have been burned to the ground.