Prajwal Revanna cases: Ex-JDS MP used to film sexual abuse to blackmail victims, says report

Former Janata Dal (Secular) Lok Sabha from Hassan Constituency, Prajwal Revanna, used his and his family's power against all his victims for alleged rape and sexual harassment, reported News18 quoting the Special Investigation Team (SIT) sources probing the case.

The report added that Revanna and his family's power fear forced women to submit to him and even prevented the victims from mentioning it to Prajwal’s mother Bhavani Revanna.

“They were all in awe and fear of the Revanna family. The sheer fear of the family using their power to suppress them, or in the case of Prajwal, of exposing them using the videos, kept them under the cloud of fear and silenced them,” News18 quoted a senior SIT official as saying.

So far, the SIT received complaints from four survivors of rape allegedly by Prajwal. While one complaint has been received against Prajwal and his father, JDS MLA HD Revanna, of sexual assault and kidnapping. One more complaint of alleged kidnapping was received against Bhavani Revanna.

According to the latest chargesheet filed by SIT, Prajwal Revanna has been charged under section 376 (2) (K) for “being in a position of control or dominance over a woman, committing rape on a woman,” 376 (2) (n) for “committing rape repeatedly on the same woman,” 354 for outraging the modesty of a woman under the IPC, and various sections of the IT Act 2000, said the report.

Earlier on 24 August and 9 September, two chargesheets were filed by the SIT. Now, the police are all set to file a chargesheet for each of the four FIRs filed by survivors against Prajwal Revanna.

The report mentions that the two chargesheets already filed are bare based on the complaints by one of the survivors, who is in her late fifties, and another, who is in her late forties, both of whom are farm labourers. These two women used to doubled up as housemaids in the Hassan Gannikada farmhouse as well as in the Bengaluru house.

Allegations against Revanna family:

On 24 August, the SIT submitted the first chargesheet of 2,144 pages to the Special court Representatives in Bengaluru. It included statements from 150 witnesses who accused HD Revanna of sexually assaulting a domestic worker at his Holenarasipura home from 2019 to 2022.

The SIT also charged Prajwal with raping the same woman at their Basavanagudi residence in Bengaluru and coerced the woman’s daughter to undress during video calls that he secretly recorded. In the April 28 FIR with the Holenarasipura police, HD Revanna is listed as the first accused, followed by Prajwal.

Adding on, HD Revanna has also been charged with sexual harassment under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, said the report, adding he allegedly kidnapped a housemaid and held captive at a Revanna family farmhouse. Later, she escaped and filed a case against Revanna.

HD Revanna's wife and Prajwal's mother – Bhavani Revanna – has also been accused of her involvement in the abduction. Though she appealed for bail, it is pending in the Supreme Court.

Currently, all four victims have recorded statements with the SIT. Meanwhile, a JDS worker too accused Prajwal of raping her in his official quarters in Hassan. He then recorded it, followed by blackmailing her for further sexual encounters between January 2021 and April 2024.

Not only this, Prajwal has also been accused by a woman – a homemaker seeking school admission for her son – of sexual harassment. However, she filed an FIR ten days after his arrest on 31 May after several people complained against the former JDS MP. In her FIR, she alleged that Prajwal requested her phone number during a meeting about her son’s admission and, following this, coerced her into virtual sex through video calls. This reportedly took place 8 to 10 times between October 2019 and 2020, as Prajwal threatened her to release the recordings if she refused.

The Congress government in Karnataka set up the SIT on 28 April to probe all these cases. Prajwal fled to Germany soon after polling in the Lok Sabha election on 26 April. He returned to India on 31 May after his grandfather and former PM, HD Deve Gowda, appealed to him to surrender before the law. Upon arrival at the Bengaluru International Airport, he was arrested.