Indian Express:
Karnataka: Thursday, July 23, 2015.
The
alleged extortion racket in the Karnataka Lokayukta continued to unravel on
Wednesday with a Special Investigation Team (SIT) arresting two persons journalist
M B Shivarame Gowda and RTI activist V Shankare Gowda for reportedly supplying
information to a gang for targeting state officials.
The
gang is alleged to have used fake identities, RTI applications and covert means
to extort Rs 1 crore from an executive engineer, M N Krishnamurthy, on May 4.
Ashwin Rao, son of Lokayukta Justice Y Bhaskar Rao, a former chief justice of
Karnataka, has been named as the prime accused.
The
SIT, constituted by the Congress government on the request of the Lokayukta,
began the investigation about 10 days ago. A realtor, Ashok Kumar, was arrested
on Tuesday.
Shivarame
Gowda, who earlier worked with Kannada channel ETV, owns a chain of
restaurants. He and Shankare Gowda have been booked for extortion, criminal
conspiracy, cheating and corruption.
The
duo are alleged to have filed RTIs to obtain the identities of government
officials handling costly projects including engineering, construction and land
projects. Based on this information, their associates in the Lokayukta are
reported to have threatened these officials with corruption proceedings and
extorted money from them.
The
arrests were made on the basis of call detail records of a cellphone (9066029213)
that was allegedly used by Ashok Kumar to summon Krishnamurthy, Bengaluru Urban
zilla parishad executive engineer, to the Lokayukta office on May 4. According
to officials, an SMS was sent from this number to Krishnamurthy on that day
saying, “Hi, I tried calling you. Please call back when you are free’’.
When
the engineer called the number, a man reportedly identified himself as a
Lokayukta joint commissioner and asked him to report to the Lokayukta office.
According
to Krishnamurthy, when he reached the Lokayukta’s office, a man who identified
himself as Krishna Rao allegedly told him that a report had been received
against him alleging irregularities in implementation of MP and MLA local area
development schemes.
Krishnamurthy
was reportedly told to pay Rs 1 crore to avoid corruption proceedings against
him. Krishnamurthy later identified the man as the Lokayukta’s son, Ashwin Rao.
The SIM card was found to have been obtained using the fake credentials of a
woman, Nagarathna, from rural Bengaluru.
The
SIT probe headed by Additional Director General of Police Kamal Pant has been
hampered by the absence of CCTV footage for the day that Krishnamurthy was
summoned to the Lokayukta office. The office of the Lokayukta claimed that the
CCTV system could not record during the period.
Denying
the charges, an advocate who appeared for Shankare Gowda in the special
Lokayukta court on Wednesday said: “He (Shankare Gowda) is a well educated
person. He was filing RTIs on government officials but that does not mean he
was involved in any racket.”
Advocate
Pramod Chandra, who filed a bail plea for Shivarame Gowda, argued that the
arrest was valid only if it was part of the investigation into Krishnamurthy’s
complaint, and said his client could not be arrested for alleged links to the
larger internal corruption in the Lokayukta. The special Lokayukta court sent
the duo to SIT custody till June 30.
Meanwhile,
the BJP alleged in the state legislature last week that Ashwin Rao and his
accomplices had extorted about Rs 200 crore from 169 government officials by
threatening them with corruption proceedings. The state government has been
accused of shielding the Lokayukta by not seeking his resignation.
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