The victims were thrashed for hours before their families came to their rescue.
In a shocking case of moral policing, a man and woman from different communities were brutally thrashed with pipes and rods by a group of 17 people for sitting together near a lake in Karnataka's Belagavi Saturday. The victims happen to be cousins.
They were out together to apply for the state government's scheme but were assaulted for hours till their families came to their rescue.
The accused belonged to a minority community, police said, adding nine of them have been arrested. Two of them are juveniles, they said.
The victims were sitting near Killa Lake in Belagavi at around 1:30 PM on Saturday when a group of around eight approached them and started asking for their names. When they learned that they were from different religions, they started questioning him as to why he was sitting next to the woman, the police said.
The goons abused the man and even tried to strangle him, according to the complaint. Subsequently, more people joined the group and they took the cousins to a room and brutally thrashed the man for hours, as per the complaint. They thrashed him till 6:30 PM, it said.
The woman was also attacked, according to police sources.
The man alleged that the mob took their mobile phones away and also robbed cash from them. "They asked why people from different communities were sitting together. I told them she was my own aunt's daughter. They took our phones. They took Rs 7,000 cash from us."
The woman's parents belong to different religions.
Since the man was from a Scheduled Castes community, a case has been registered under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, said police sources.
The case has elicited reactions from state political leaders who called such incidents a "social issue".
"I was told they were relatives and that they were just sitting and chatting when suddenly this group approached them. Police have already made some arrests. We handle these (cases of moral policing based on communities or caste) on a case-by-case basis. These things don't always happen. Police take action accordingly. Each case is different. Sometimes youngsters are involved, sometimes elders are involved and sometimes family members are involved. We can't predict (these cases), Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara told NDTV.
Addressing the issue of opposition faced by inter-faith couples, he said, "It's a social problem. Basavanna (a 12th-century poet and philosopher) had advocated for inter-community weddings because he wanted a caste-less society. As a social problem, this has to be resolved gradually."
BJP's CN Ashwath Narayan said that the public "shouldn't take the law into their hands".
"If someone has any doubts about someone's intention, they should call the concerned authorities and let them be enquired by the authorities. People shouldn't take the law into their hands. Innocent people suffer because of this," he said.
Despite many governments insisting on putting an end to the cases of moral policing, such atrocities continue to plague the state.
Karnataka Minister Ramalinga Reddy in October last year accused the BJP and its workers of indulging in "mischievous acts in disguise" and alleged that they create rifts and instigate communal violence in the society.
He alleged that the BJP supports moral policing, fomenting tension, and they are behind incidents of assaults and communal violence. "BJP workers in disguise --by changing their appearance and name -- indulge in mischief. It is their nature by birth, it is in their blood," Mr Reddy added.
His statements evoked a sharp reaction from the BJP, whose leaders termed it as "political" aimed at covering up the government's failure. Senior BJP leader and former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said Mr Reddy's statement is "totally mischievous and misleading".