Bengaluru Police have booked former chief ministers Siddaramaiah and HD Kumaraswamy along with few other Congress leaders including former deputy chief minister G Parameshwara, DK Shivakumar, Congress state chief Dinesh Gundu Rao, and JD(S) leaders under several Sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including sedition charges for opposing the income tax raids during Lok Sabha polls.
In addition to this, the then Bengaluru Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar, former DCP (East) Rahul Shadpurwad, former DCP (Central) Deveraju and six other police officers have been booked as well.
Acting on a private complaint by activist Mallikarjuna A, a local court directed the commercial street police to register an FIR under various sections of the IPC, including criminal conspiracy and attempting or abetting waging war against the Government of India. The FIR was registered on Wednesday.
Mallikarjuna A, an activist form Tumkur, had on March 27 alleged that the then chief minister H D Kumaraswamy had issued statements to the media that he had received information that I-T officials were preparing to raid houses belonging to some JD(S) leaders.
The next day they held a protest opposing the raids on JD(S) and Congress leaders. This amounted to obstructing I-T officials from discharging their duties and this also led to major traffic snarls in the area. He further alleged that the police too didn’t do anything to stop the protest.
IT officials had conducted raids prior to the Lok Sabha elections as precautionary measures against the use of money power in the Lok Sabha elections. The then Congress-JD(S) government had sulked over it, calling it vendetta politics.
Cautioning that he would not shy away from pulling off a Mamata if the centre continued to indulge in “politics of vendetta to weaken opponents” ahead of the elections, the then CM HD Kumaraswamy had also accused the centre of taking the CRPF’s help in the raids in order to maintain the mission’s secrecy.
Meanwhile, reacting to the sedition charges, Congress leader DK Shivakumar, who was in Tihar jail in a money laundering case until recently, said all the cases were politically motivated and he will fight it politically. “We did not enter the income tax office. We stood 150 metres away and raised slogans,” he added.
