Bengaluru: A video of rape accused Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna has appeared on social media in which the absconding Janata Dal (Secular) parliamentarian claims he will appear before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Friday.
Prajwal, the 33-year-old grandson of former prime minister and JD(S) patriarch H.D.Deve Gowda, is accused of sexually assaulting scores of women over the last several years.
In the 2.20-minute video, Prajwal claims in Kannada that he was not aware of the allegations nor was there a case filed against him when he left the country post polling for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections on 26 April.
He says that his travel plans to fly abroad were “pre-planned”. Though he says in the beginning of the video that he wanted to share his current location, he never does in the duration of the video.
“When elections happened on 26 (April) that day there was no instance or case against me, SIT also was not formed. Going abroad on 26 was also pre-planned,” he claims in the video.
ThePrint cannot independently verify the authenticity of the widely shared video.
The video comes exactly a month since Prajwal left for Germany using his diplomatic passport while visuals of his alleged exploitation began to be circulated online back home.
Prajwal feigned innocence even about the floating of these allegations. At least four cases have been officially filed with the SIT so fat with three of them alleging rape.
“So, I went abroad and after 3-4 days when I saw YouTube, news channels, I got this information. After that I learnt about the SIT notice and through my lawyer I had asked for 7-day time. After 7 days of time that I sought, the next day itself, the Congress’ senior leader, Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders …they started to speak, discuss this in public forums and there was a political conspiracy,” he alleges.
Prajwal is the alliance candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-JD(S) coalition from Hassan. The Congress had alleged that the BJP and the JD(S) knew about the allegations but still allowed Prajwal to flee the country.
“I will personally on Friday 31 May, at 10 am, come before the SIT. I will cooperate fully with this investigation and give the correct answer to all of this. I also have faith in the judiciary. I will definitely come out of all these false allegations through the courts,” Prajwal says in the video statement.
H.D.Kumaraswamy, the JD(S) state president and Prajwal’s uncle, had alleged that Karnataka deputy chief minister and Congress state president D.K.Shivakumar was behind the release of the videos without blurring the faces of the women allegedly exploited by his nephew.
There are said to be hundreds of such videos, but the SIT has not confirmed the total number of women allegedly exploited by Prajwal A case of abduction was also levelled against Prajwal’s father H.D.Revanna for allegedly kidnapping a 55-year-old woman, who was also allegedly secually assaulted by his MP son.
Revanna has been granted bail in in two separate cases of kidnapping and sexual harassment.
The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government has written at least two letters to the Modi government to issue a blue-corner notice (authorising Interpol to collect information about a person’s identity, location or activities related to a criminal investigation) against Prajwal and bring him back to face the law.
Also Read: Prajwal Revanna case shows politicians don’t care about women’s safety. They are the culprits
‘Disturbed & stayed away’
Prajwal, in the video, says that he went into “depression and isolation” after seeing the allegations and political conspiracy against him.
“After seeing all this I went into depression and isolation. That’s why I first sought all your forgiveness. After that in Hassan as well, some powers got together and hatched a political conspiracy against me. Because I am growing in politics and they want to bring me down…for that all of them came together.
“When I saw all this, I was further disturbed and I only stayed away. So I don’t want anyone to feel wrongly about this,” he says.
The Congress has accused Prajwal of his involvement in the ‘world’s biggest sex scandal’ while its former president Rahul Gandhi has accused the JD(S) MP of “mass raping” over 400 women.
On Thursday, Deve Gowda wrote a strongly worded letter to his grandson to return and face the inquiry and not test his patience. “At this juncture, I can do only one thing; I can issue a stern warning to Prajwal and ask him to return from wherever he is and surrender before the police. He should subject himself to the legal process,” the 92-year-old veteran politician said in a statement Thursday.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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