Bengaluru: Actress Harshika Poonacha has alleged that she and her husband were harassed and attacked by a mob for speaking in local language (Kannada).
Harshika, who acts predominantly in Kannada films, said a group of men also tried to rob her and husband Bhuvann Ponnannaa, and also that a police officer was reluctant to help when approached by the couple.
“How safe are we locals in our Bangalore? Are we living in Pakistan or Afghanistan?” Harshika wrote in a detailed Instagram post with videos and photos of alleged attackers.
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She had gone out for dinner with her husband and family at Karama Restaurant near Bengaluru’s Fraser Town. As they sat in their car post dinner, Harshika said they were attacked by a group of men.
“A couple of days ago, I went to have dinner with my family at a restaurant called ‘Karama’ on Masjid Road in Pulikeshi Nagar near Fraser Town area. After dinner, we were leaving the valet parking after taking our car, when two men suddenly appeared near the driver-side window and started arguing that our vehicle was so big that if it suddenly moved it might touch them,” Harshika narrated.
“My husband asked them to leave because they were talking about a possible incident and it didn’t make sense. We moved the vehicle a little further and by then, these two men started abusing us in their language and even tried to hit my husband in the face and said, ‘These local Kannadigas should be taught a lesson.’ My husband was very patient and didn’t react much,” she wrote.
She alleged that within minutes, around 30 men gathered and tried to snatch her husband’s gold chain and broke it as he resisted.
“Two of them tore my husband’s gold chain and tried to pull it towards them… My husband realised just in time and held on to it and gave it to me. They damaged the car and tried to physically abuse us by saying things that neither we nor the others could understand,” Harshika continued with the harrowing experience.
“My husband did not react much since there were women and family in our car. Also, what I noticed was that they had a problem with us speaking in Kannada. ‘Yeh local Kannada wala hai (these are local Kannada people),’ they said. It agitated them more when my husband and I spoke in Kannada only,” the actress claimed.
She made a call to an inspector she knew.
“All the men dispersed in a fraction of a second like nothing had happened… We tried looking for them but they had disappeared into thin air in a matter of seconds,” she added.
However, they didn’t get help from local police. “We found a patrol police vehicle nearby and narrated the incident to Mr Umesh, the Assistant Sub-Inspector, from the nearby police station, he did not seem keen to help us. He said we should talk to the higher-ups in the department and did not even have the courtesy to come and find out what happened,” she wrote.
Though the incident took place on April 2, Harshika and her family didn’t file a police complaint as they thought safety was important.
