If Dignity of Women and Rule of Law Truly Matter, We Cannot Accept Sex Offenders

Be it Brij Bhushan or Prajwal Revanna, winning elections in India clearly matters more than crimes against women.

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here, winning elections clearly matters more than crimes against women. Be it in the case of Prajwal Revanna or Brij Bhushan Singh.

(Photo: The Quint)

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here, winning elections clearly matters more than crimes against women. Be it in the case of Prajwal Revanna or Brij Bhushan Singh.

Prajwal Revanna, Lok Sabha MP from Hassan in Karnataka, representing Janada Dal (Secular) or JD(S), is also the grandson of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. He stands accused of sexually abusing several women over a period of years, even filming the abuse to further coerce and blackmail them. Most of the women reportedly belong to his constituency.

Charged along with him, in at least one case, is his father HD Revanna, a JD(S) MLA from Holenarasipur, also in Hassan district. His uncle HD Kumaraswamy, is President of the JD(S), and a two-time Chief Minister of Karnataka. And, the JD(S) is fighting this Lok Sabha election as a BJP ally, so a win for Revanna will be a win for the NDA.

So yes, grave charges of sexual abuse against a 33-year-old scion of a political family with formidable clout in Karnataka. It reads like an overused plotline from a C-grade film. Except, it is not. The set-up and what followed in Revanna’s case actually reminds us why such film stories are written – it’s because they do, unfortunately, reflect reality.

Revanna: All This 'Tamasha' for Public Consumption, Has Happened Too Late

Rumours of videos of sexual abuse involving Prajwal Revanna have been heard since early 2023. But no formal complaint was filed. Revanna, on his part, named Naveen Gowda, a local Congress politician, as the person behind these videos, claiming they were fabricated using morphed images. A local BJP leader Devaraje Gowda also claims to have warned his party leadership about these videos, and against giving the Hassan ticket to Revanna.

Despite all this, the Karnataka police did not proactively investigate the matter - they did not try to source the videos, they did not try to locate the women survivors of the alleged abuse, and they did not question Prajwal Revanna or Naveen Gowda.

Meanwhile, the JD(S), sticking to its tradition of dynastic politics, nominated Prajwal again from its stronghold Hassan, for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Voting day was 26 April, but a few days ahead, several pen drives containing hundreds of explicit videos of Revanna’s alleged sexual abuse of several women, were circulated in Hassan. They were soon also on social media. Surprisingly, the state police, the state administration, and the Election Commission continued to do nothing.

Just hours after voting ended, at 2 am on 27 April, Prajwal Revanna flew out of Bengaluru to Munich, Germany, according to an India Today report, that claims to have accessed his airline ticket details. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) subsequently confirmed that Revanna used his diplomatic passport to fly out, and had no political clearance.

The timeline is frustratingly ‘convenient’ for the key accused. And it gets worse.

Only after Revanna had ‘flown the coop’ in the dead of night, did the state government act. On 27 April, when most media was not even aware that Prajwal Revanna had left India, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced the setting up of a Special Investigation Team to take up the case. A day later, FIRs were filed against the absconding MP and his father, HD Revanna, who was also remanded to three days of police custody of the SIT.

Revanna’s party, the JD(S) announced that they had suspended him. The BJP tried to distance itself from him, despite the sticky fact that he was an NDA candidate. It is clear that while the scandal stayed out of the public eye, the BJP’s top leadership chose to ignore these grave allegations of serial sexual abuse. The Congress-led state government too, has acted only after Revanna got to Germany. Meaning, all this tamasha, for public consumption, has happened too late.

Why? Because over the decades, both, the BJP and Congress have partnered with the JD(S) in Karnataka’s three-cornered political game. As JD(S) has often played the role of king-maker, neither party wants to alienate them, and that is Revanna’s ‘stay out of jail’ card. This is how political realities trump grave crimes of sexual abuse against several women.

Several questions remain unanswered – Was the BJP, Congress, and JD(S) leadership aware of these videos much earlier? If yes, then why weren’t these videos submitted to the police to investigate? Did all three parties virtually ‘collude’ in protecting Prajwal Revanna from the law? Also, despite knowledge of these videos, why was he given the Hassan Lok Sabha ticket? Was the alleged sexual abuse overlooked only because it was not known to the public? And who was responsible for allowing him to leave India?

As the identities of several survivors of the sexual abuse videos have gone public, there are already reports of many of them leaving their homes to avoid public and media scrutiny and the social stigma that may also follow. Will these women, the real victims of all that has transpired, ever get justice?

Revanna’s lawyers claim he will return to India on 16 May 2024, but we have heard these assurances before. The fear is that like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, and others, we may soon add Prajwal Revanna to the list of those who have managed to evade the law.

Brij Bhushan: Do Our Champion Wrestlers Matter, Even a Little Bit, to the BJP?

Meanwhile, in UP, the BJP has bowed to six-time MP, and former Wrestling Federation of India chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and given the Kaisarganj Lok Sabha ticket to his son Karan Bhushan Singh. But the real candidate, of course, remains the father. It’s yet another case of politics trumping the dignity of women in India.

That seven female wrestlers found the courage to accuse their former federation head of sexual harassment, has not mattered to the BJP.

That Olympic and Commonwealth Games medal-winning wrestlers, such as Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia, and Vinesh Phogat, among many others, spent months protesting on Delhi’s roads in support of the seven survivors, has not mattered. That these champion wrestlers put their glittering careers on the line, that they were vilified for the stand they took, that they were roughed up and dragged across the streets of Delhi, none of this has mattered to the BJP’s top leadership.

The Modi government did not allow a report into this matter, prepared by a committee headed by champion boxer, and the BJP’s own Rajya Sabha MP, Mary Kom, to be made public. Even India’s iconic athlete PT Usha, President of the Indian Olympic Association, and a nominated Rajya Sabha MP was heard calling out the wrestlers’ protests. That the issue divided India’s sporting and wrestling community, has not mattered.

That Indian wrestling and its federation are currently in shambles also doesn’t seem to concern the BJP. In 2023, the WFI was suspended by its umbrella international body, United World Wrestling, as it hadn’t elected a new Indian federation chief. Why did such a situation come about?

Because while the BJP leadership was able to get Brij Bhushan to step away, he was not prepared to let someone else occupy the post either. After months of delay, a sham election was conducted in which Sanjay Singh, a close associate of Brij Bhushan was elected WFI chief. Video clips of the celebrations clearly show Brij Bhushan Singh being felicitated far more than the new chief.

The harsh fact is that the political influence of the ‘bahubali’ Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh can help the BJP win, or lose, five Lok Sabha seats in central Uttar Pradesh – Kaisarganj, Gonda, Bahraich, Domariyaganj, and Shravasti. And none of all that we have listed above matters more to the BJP than winning these five seats in upcoming elections.

The reactions from top wrestlers like Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik on X, sum it up well. 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medal winner Punia wrote – “It is the misfortune of the country that daughters who win medals are dragged on the streets and the son of the person who sexually exploits them is honoured by giving him a ticket.”

Rio Olympics bronze medal winner Sakshi Malik posted - "The daughters of the country lost, Brij Bhushan won… by giving a ticket to his son you have broken the morale of crores of daughters of the country... is the country's government so weak in front of one man?”

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here, if the dignity of women and the rule of law truly matters, we cannot accept sex offenders in politics.