Mysuru: Speaking to mediapersons here, former Mysuru-Kodagu Lok Sabha member A H Vishwanath slammed the opposition parties in the state for their selective attitude in the matter of the unnatural death of IAS officer D K Ravi.
He took a dig at the BJP and JD(S) for investing full trust in CBI all of a sudden. He sought to know if JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy and BJP leader R Ashoka would have taken to the streets, if the deceased officer – a fellow-Vokkaliga – belonged any downtrodden class. He urged both of them to look at politics and public life beyond the casteist lines.
Vishwanath demanded that just like the case of Ravi’s death, the cases of unnatural deaths of BJP leader and former CM Yeddyurappa’s wife Mytradevi and former Udupi MLA Raghupati Bhat’s wife Padmapriya, the massacre of Dalits at Kambalapalli, the KPSC scam during the tenure of Kumaraswamy as chief minister, the 150-crore kickback case, the killing of officer Mahantesh and the case involving Raghaveshwara Bharati in a sexual assault case and similar others also be handed to the CBI for a thorough investigation.
Background:
Yeddyurappa had joined as a clerk at Shankar Rice Mill in Shikaripura, owned by Veerabhadra Shastri, in mid-1960’s. In 1967, he, a Lingayat, married Shastri’s daughter Mytradevi. They had two sons and three daughters from the marriage.
In 2004, Mytradevi reportedly died of falling into a sump while drawing water. Suspicions surrounded the incident as people around found it hard to believe that the big-built Mytradevi could slip into a narrow square opening of the sump. A citizen of Shimoga district had filed a criminal case demanding a thorough probe into the unnatural death. The status of the case is not known.
Padmapriya, wife of the then-BJP MLA Raghupati Bhat, reportedly had a marital discord. In mid-June 2008 she went missing from Udupi. Within two days or so, she was found hanging in Shama Apartments in Delhi, where she had decided to live. The circumstances that led to her death and the incidents connected to it have still remained shrouded in mystery. Demands for probe have remained unresponded.
