How prosperous Bhatkal town earned terror tag

BHATKAL: The town in Uttara Kannada district has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Bhatkal, 120 km from Karwar, was once the district's most prosperous town. For its predominant Muslim population, economic prosperity rode on the 1960s Gulf boom when Muslim youth went to West Asia to work. The flow of petro dollars fed smuggling operations in electronic goods and gold as well. By the 1990s, Bhatkal had transformed into a hotbed of communal violence.

A trivial clash between the youth of two communities led to riots. The town was kept under curfew for three months without break. In 1996, a sitting BJP MLA Dr U Chittaranjan was shot dead by an assailant whose identity hasn't been established till date.

The Muslims here are Nawayats, said to be descendents of Arabs who came to Bhatkal to trade 1,000 years ago. Nawayats have a Jain infl ence, Bhatkal earlier dominated by Jains.

The town's been hyphenated with the Bhatkal terrorists, Yasin Bhatkal and his IM comrades in-arms, brothers Riyaz and Iqbal. Today people from Bhatkal are not welcomed. "We don't get rooms in hotels or seats in educational institutions. It's a stigma," says Ashok, a trader.

A police officer who worked in Bhatkal in the 1990s said Yasin's sleeper cells are still suspected to operate in Bhatkal. They provide logistical support to Yasin and his groups. Smuggling is intertwined with terror activities, he says.