The office of a newspaper reporter has been vandalized by India’s southern Mangalore City. The paper recently published a translated version of an article by controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.<br /><br />A group of 5-6 masked men entered the office of the newspaper Kannada (cah nah dah) Prabha, at night and attacked the newspaper staff working in the office.<br /><br />[Veerendra Shetty, Reporter]: <br />"We were talking inside the office when suddenly five to six men came and started damaging the office. Six or seven of our computers were damaged in the attack. They also attacked us with whatever object they could lay their hands on. Our reporters tried to defend themselves, but these people carried rods and other weapons and defense became a little difficult." <br /><br />The miscreants even threw a petrol bomb at the office, which caused a minor fire. Nobody was injured in the attack though.<br /><br />About 1,500 people took to streets on Monday to express anguish over the Kannada translation of Nasreen's article on burqas, garments worn by many Muslim women.<br /><br />Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had 'deliberately and maliciously' hurt Muslims' religious feelings in her Bengali-language novel entitled “Shame.”<br /><br />Several of her books have been banned in India and Bangladesh. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 1994.
