Representative image for an arrest.
Credit: iStock Photo
Bengaluru: The Bengaluru police have arrested five men, including a minor, for abusing and attacking a 21-year-old Muslim woman and her male friend from a different faith.
The suspects have been identified as Mahin, a scrap worker, Mansoor, a tailor, and Afridi Pasha and Waseem Khan, both welders. The minor is aged 16, according to the police.
The incident occurred on April 5. A video of the incident was shared on WhatsApp and social media.
The woman, wearing a full-face burqa, and her friend were sitting on a scooter, facing each other, outside a park in Suvarna Layout, Chandra Layout.
The five men suddenly waylay them, and one of them starts making a video on a mobile phone.
The video, verified by DH, shows the suspects asking the woman to get off the scooter, forcing her to remove her face covering and abusing her.
"Don't you have any shame? Is this what your parents taught you?" one of them asks her.
The suspects also ask for her family's contact number. However, she stands her ground and says it's "my personal matter".
The men later accost the woman’s friend and ask for his address. One of them berates him: "Didn't you know she is Muslim?" When he responds in the affirmative, he is thrashed with a cricket bat, according to the video.
The suspects later slap both of them, but let them go after 20 minutes.
After the video went viral, the woman filed a police complaint, leading to the arrests.
The police invoked Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections related to unlawful assembly, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt, voluntarily causing hurt by weapons, criminal intimidation, and assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty.
A court has remanded them in judicial custody, a police officer close to the investigation said.