Udupi: Karkala MLA V Sunil Kumar on Monday kicked up a storm by declaring his support for the Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) constable Naveen Naik who had shot down cattle trader Kabeer at a checkpost near Sringeri in Chikmagalur district on April 19, reportedly mistaking him for a maoist.
This is the only way of ending “illegal cattle trafficking” in the State, he said at a rally organised by the BJP’s Udupi district unit on Monday to protest Naik’s arrest. Kumar strongly defended Naik and said that more such acts should happen as, in his view, there was no other way of curbing cattle trafficking following the “failure and competence” of the Congress government in the State to do so.
“Thousands of Naveen Naiks should be born to kill scores of Kabeers in order to get rid of cattle trafficking,” Kumar said.
He questioned the basis for booking Naik under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC. The constable was just doing his duty, he stressed. The government is behaving like the “despotic” Taliban regime and is “totally biased” and playing “all sorts of vote bank politics” to appease a particular community, he claimed.
The BJP MLA demanded that the government drop the IPC sections against Naik and withdraw the compensation announced for Kabeer’s family as “he did not deserve it.” The government should stop supporting the “culprits of cattle trafficking” or else that would lead to more such offences in the future, he asserted.
