- Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Several clips surfaced on social media allegedly featuring Prajwal Revanna, an MP from the southern state of Karnataka, assaulting many women sexually.
By: Twinkle Roy
AMID the row over explicit videos allegedly showing him assaulting a number of women sexually, Prajwal Revanna, a parliamentarian from the southern Indian state of Karnataka, was on Tuesday (30) suspended from his party — Janata Dal (Secular), which is in alliance with prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the current general elections.
Revanna, who is the grandson of former Indian prime minister and the chief of the JD(S), HD Deve Gowda, represents the state’s Hassan parliamentary constituency which went to poll on April 26. He was also handed a show-cause notice by his party.
The controversial video clips, allegedly involving the 33-year-old MP, were reportedly doing the rounds in the constituency for months and a local leader of the BJP had warned its state leadership about the allegations against the politician.
The videos were widely circulated in the constituency and a woman filed a case against the MP soon after, accusing him of sexual misconduct. She also alleged that she had been a victim of sexual assault several times between 2019 and 2022. She claimed that Revanna had also misbehaved with her daughter over a video call and engaged in “vulgar conversations” with her.
Revanna became a parliamentarian for the first time in the 2019 general elections when he defeated the BJP’s A Manju by more than 141,000 ballots.
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Siddaramaiah, the chief minister of Karnataka who is from the BJP’s national opposition Indian National Congress and a former member of the JD(S), decided to form a special investigation team to investigate Revanna, who is also the nephew of a former chief minister and son of another former minister of the state.
Police registered a complaint against the accused MP based on the statement of a woman who worked in the family’s home, and also named his father, HD Revanna, as a suspect, reports said.
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Revanna did not respond to requests for a statement with reports saying he was out of the country, Reuters reported. His father also refused to give any reaction on the matter to the media on Monday but said his son would return when required.
“Since this has been handed over to a special investigation team, I will not say anything that will affect it,” the senior Revanna was quoted as saying. “He had to go on a trip and he has gone … He will come when he is called to join the investigation.”
The Congress has not let go the opportunity to target Modi over the matter alleging that the PM and his BJP had agreed to field Revanna despite knowing about the accusations against him.
The Grand-Old Party’s Supriya Shrinate said at a press conference that the women allegedly targeted by Prajwal “are domestic workers, party workers, his MPs”.
“One of the videos shows a 63-year-old woman, old enough to be his mother or grandmother, pleading to him — ‘Don’t do this to me. Don’t record this’,” she alleged.
In an online post, Congress’s national spokesperson Dr Shama Mohamed said, “The BJP government at the Centre helped sexual predator Prajwal Revanna escape from India. Deva Gowda knew exactly what his grandson was doing but kept his eyes closed and gave him the ticket once again. And of course, Narendra Modi is silent.”
Nagalakshmi Choudhary, chairperson of Karnataka State Commission for Women, said she had received a pen drive that contained several explicit videos and some of them purportedly showed Revanna, NDTV reported.
Local BJP leader Devaraje Gowda had claimed that he had written to the party’s state chief BY Vijayendra last December, flagging “grave allegations” against the influential Deve Gowda family, including the accused MP, the report added.
According to him, he had also received a pen drive that included nearly 3,000 explicit videos of women that were used to blackmail them into continuing to engage in sexual acts.
The Indian Express reported after learning from a source in the BJP that even Revanna’s own party was in great discomfort over the matter and HD Kumarawamy, Revanna’s uncle and a former chief minister of Karnataka, was trying to distance himself from the controversy.
The BJP also attempted to stay away from the snow-balling controversy with Vijayendra saying a probe by the state government was underway and criticised “attempts to drag” his party and PM Modi into the matter. He urged the opposition Congress not to politicise the matter.
