After court plays umpire, Karnataka Minister KJ George quits

BENGALURU: Karnataka minister for Bengaluru development and town planning KJ George resigned on Monday after a court ordered an FIR against him for alleged abetment of suicide of a deputy superintendent of police in the state.

George told the media, after an informal Cabinet meeting: “I am not guilty in any way in the death of Dy SP Ganapathy. I have full faith in the judiciary and I am voluntarily resigning to allow a free and impartial inquiry into the whole matter.”

BJP MPs from Karnataka were planning to raise the demand for George’s resignation in Parliament and the Congress was planning to counter it by pointing out that an FIR under the same charges of abetment to suicide had been filed against Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya in the Rohith Vemula case this January but he had not resigned.

However, on Monday, a judicial magistrate in Madikeri ordered an first information report into a complaint by the family of MK Ganapathy, the DySP who committed suicide.

The complaint named George and two senior IPS officers. In Dattatreya’s case, the FIR was filed by the Telangana Police.

“We decided to ask our minister to resign so that we can take the moral high ground and point out that the Centre has not taken cognisance of such a serious case as Rohith Vemula’s, whereas we have listened to even a weak case against George,” a senior Congress leader told ET.