In a recent case that has shaken our country , in a small village in Karnataka, a group linked to In a Hindu right-wing outfit allegedly poisoned a school’s drinking water, not to harm the students directly, but to target the school’s Muslim headmaster.
The incident occurred on July 14 at the Government Lower Primary School in Hulikatti village, Belagavi district. Twelve children fell ill after drinking water from the school’s tank water they trusted, water meant to sustain them. Luckily, all of them recovered after prompt treatment. But what followed has left a deeper wound on the community’s ethics.
The police traced the act to a fifth-grade boy. A child, hardly old enough to understand the weight of what he was doing, was given a bottle and told to pour its contents into the tank. Behind this innocent hand, a far more troubling story unfolded.
The bottle had come from Krishna Madar, who later admitted he wasn’t acting alone. According to investigators, Krishna was being threatened. Two men — Sagar Patil, a local leader of the right-wing group Sri Ram Sene, and Naganagouda Patil, who had allegedly used fear to get him to follow through. They had something on him, something personal. And they used it.
The real aim, police say, was not just to cause panic. It was to raise suspicion, to shake trust, to isolate someone. That someone was Suleman Gorinaik, the school’s headmaster. A man who had spent over a decade guiding children in the same school. A man whose work or leadership did not create a problem as his identity did. All three accused have been arrested.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called it a “heinous act” driven by “religious hatred and fundamentalism.” He warned that such acts, if ignored, can destroy the fragile threads holding communities together.
In a country that promises unity in diversity, this incident reminds us that poison can take many forms. Some are poured into water tanks. Others, more quietly, into their minds. And it is the second kind that lingers longer, and spreads faster, if left unchecked.
