A conductor of the state-owned transport corporation bus was assaulted on Friday for not replying to a passenger in Marathi on the outskirts of the district headquarters town of Belagavi bordering Maharashtra, police sources said.

With tears in his eyes, the 51-year-old conductor Mahadevappa Mallappa Hukkeri told reporters that a woman who boarded the bus with her male companion at Sulebhavi village spoke in Marathi.

Hukkeri said he told her that he did not know Marathi and asked her to speak in Kannada.

“When I said I don’t know Marathi, the woman abused me saying that I must learn Marathi. Suddenly a large number of people gathered and assaulted me on my head and all over the body,” the conductor said.

The injured bus conductor has been admitted to the Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences, police said adding he has got minor injuries and is out of danger.

Following the incident, pro-Kannada activists staged a protest and demanded that the people involved in the attack should be arrested.

This incident is likely to flare up the border row, which triggers from time to time.

Belagavi has a substantial Marathi-speaking population and a section among them have been demanding the merger of the district with Maharashtra, which is stoutly opposed by the state as well as the Kannada populace residing there.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)