Bengaluru riots: Congress MLA's sister, her family escaped through terrace in the nick of time

The mob ransacked Jayanthi's house. DH PHOTO/S K DINESH

The mob ransacked Jayanthi's house. DH PHOTO/S K DINESH

The mob ransacked Jayanthi’s (inset)house. DH PHOTO/S K DINESH

The mob that arrived at the house of Pulakeshinagar MLA, R Akhanda Srinivas Murthy, on Tuesday night also targeted the residence of the legislator’s sister, Jayanthi, located a stone’s throw away.

While a crowd started throwing stones at the legislator’s house, a few members of the mob barged into Jayanthi’s house. The panicked family members took the internal staircase of their duplex house to escape from the mob.

Kalavathi, the sister-in-law of Jayanthi, said: “It was around 8.30 pm when the mob started vandalising the vehicles parked in front of our house. A few minutes later, it torched the cars and the bikes parked on the roadside and then barged into our house. All of us ran to the first floor and then to the terrace. We locked the doors from the outside and jumped over to the adjacent building. The mob ransacked everything. Even clothes were taken out of wardrobes were and set on fire.

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Beds, electrical appliances, nothing was spared,” Kalavathi said, adding that had all the seven of them, including two children, not escaped on time, they would probably have been burnt to death.

After setting fire to Jayanthi’s house, the mob burnt down a bar and a wine shop on Kaval Byrasandra Main Road. Krishnappa, the bar owner, said he hadn’t encountered such a violent mob in the 20 years that he’d been doing business.

Recalling the incident, he said that around 40 people passed by his store around 9 pm on Tuesday. At the same time, he heard screams near Jayanthi’s house. He immediately asked the customers to leave the bar, and locked it.

“Almost an hour later, the mob came and tried to roll up the shutters of the bar. But it couldn’t open it, and broke open the window grille, and set the bar on fire,” Krishnappa said.

The mob then went to the second floor of the building, and vandalised the house of the manager, he added.