Bengaluru: Eminent historian Ramachandra Guha has said that he did not receive any apology from Karnataka Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai after he was manhandled by police at an anti-CAA protest in Bengaluru last year.
Guha’s statement contradicts Bommai’s remarks on the Legislative Assembly floor yesterday, where he claimed that he had called Guha to apologise for the incident.
Taking to Twitter, Guha wrote, “The Home Minister of Karnataka has claimed on the floor of the State Assembly that he apologised to me by phone for the manhandling by the Bengaluru police on 19th December 2019. This is false. I received no such call or apology.”
“Even if such an apology had been offered, I would have rejected it. The imposition of Section 144 was illegal (as the Karnataka High Court has since held) and I was proud to be one of thousands of peaceful protesters who defied the State’s arbitrary action on that day,” he added.
In yesterday’s Assembly session, Bommai also apologised to Former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar for being denied entry into Mangaluru after the police firing and anti-CAA violence took place last year.
