Big whale behind brother’s ordeal, says JDS leader Kumaraswamy; Dy CM rebuts, saying he's busy with poll campaigning

JDS state president HD Kumaraswamy on Tuesday blamed the handiwork of a ‘big whale’ for the ordeal his brother, senior JDS MLA HD Revanna was going through in the Hassan sex scandal case, in an obvious reference to arch rival, Deputy CM DK Shivakumar.

Shivakumar, however, denied the charges and said he would reply to Kumaraswamy’s comments on the floor of the assembly. “Let him catch the whale, thrash it, and swallow it. I am neither a producer nor the director,” he told the media, denying any role in the distribution of pen drives containing explicit videos.

“I am prepared to pay a price if I had played even a small role. But I am president of a political party, busy with election campaigning,” Shivakumar, who is also the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), said.


Karnataka’s special investigation team (SIT) is probing the alleged sexual abuse of women by Hassan NDA candidate Prajwal Revanna, who has been absconding since April 27. The SIT recently arrested his MLA father for being part of a plot to abduct a victim of sexual abuse from her house.

As Revanna stepped out of the central prison in Bengaluru on getting a bail from the court, Kumaraswamy, who is also a former CM, told media that his brother’s arrest was part of a conspiracy to malign the family of former PM HD Deve Gowda.

If the government had any courage or conviction, then it must lead the SIT probe in the right direction. Instead, it was unnecessarily revolving around Revanna, Kumaraswamy added. He also sought to know why the SIT officials were not chasing the people who distributed pen drives containing explicit videos or Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna’s car driver who first stole the videos and led to their widespread distribution.