Chief minister B S Yeddyurappa today said the Crime Investigation Department (CID) would investigate the alleged rape charges against Haratalu Halappa, who resigned as Food and Civil Supplies minister on Sunday after media reports of the incident at Shimoga six months ago.
“I have decided to order a CID inquiry. Let the truth come out,” Yeddyurappa said here.
The opposition Congress, meanwhile, demanded the investigation by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the case. The party took out rallies at several places across the state. Hundreds of Congress workers staged a sit-in near Mahatma Gandhi statue on M G Road in the city centre demanding the immediate arrest of Halappa, resignation of the Yeddyurappa ministry and handing over the case to CBI.
Congress workers took out rallies in Mysore, Shimoga, Gulbarga in north Karnataka and other places in support of the party’s stand.
While dismissing the Congress demand, Yeddyurappa said the party was indulging in ‘politics of revenge’. “What is it they want? Halappa has resigned. I have ordered a CID probe. Let the truth come out and the guilty will be punished,” the chief minister said.
Leader of the Congress in the state legislative assembly Siddaramaiah criticised Yeddyurappa for ‘giving a clean chit’ to Halappa and said “how can the police act against Halappa?”
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KPCC president Deshpande said, during the two years of BJP rule, at least three of its leaders were at the centre of controversy. Apart from Halappa, he named MLA B Raghupathy Bhat, whose wife had allegedly committed suicide in 2008 and excise minister M P Renukacharya who is facing charges of sexual harassment.
Yeddyurappa, while accepting Halappa’s resignation, had said the allegations were a ‘conspriacy against Halappa and the government’. He had called Halappa a ‘satvik’ (pure person).
After Yeddyurappa announced the CID probe, home minister V S Acharya said the police would act against Halappa as per the law. “We will not pre-empt, nor prompt or sidetrack the issue,” he told reporters.
Asked if the police would mete out the same treatment to Halappa as was done in the case of Nityanandaswamy, who was arrested and remanded to judicial custody in two criminal cases, including rape, Acharya said “law will take its course”. There would not be any favour to Halappa and “we have been very fair in all cases. The question of discrimination does not arise.”
Late Sunday, the alleged victim, wife of Venkatesh Murthy of Shimoga, met state police chief Ajai Kumar Singh, and gave a 12-page complaint detailing the incident on the night of November 26, 2009.
A case of non-cognisable offence was later registered at the High Grounds Police station in Bangalore’s central business district.
Murthy, a friend of Halappa and a financier, told reporters outside the DGP office late Sunday that he did not file the complaint at Shimoga, as he was not sure if the local police would have entertained it had the incident not been reported in the media and also because Halappa and Yeddyurappa hail from the same town.
Murthy said, he decided to lodge the complaint now as Halappa and his men had begun to threaten that his two children would face consequences if clippings of the alleged incident captured by him on his cell phone were not destroyed.
Murthy released the clippings to several TV channels in Bangalore late Sunday. In a clipping the wife is shown crying and telling her husband in Kannada: “Halappa raped me”.