Bangalore: It has been five days since the young and dynamic IAS officer DK Ravi passed away under mysterious circumstances and looking at the turn of events, it is evident that the Karnataka government is not only trying to hush up the case, but in the process shockingly sullying the image of an honest person, who earned the respect of thousands of people across the state – all just to justify its original claim that he allegedly committed suicide because of “personal reasons”.
With things heating up in Karnataka over the delay in handing over the probe into Ravi’s death to the CBI, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister KJ George seem to be in a hurry to selectively leak information relating to the personal life of the deceased officer. There is a no doubt that the state government has undertaken a systematic and organized campaign to give the incident a “love twist”.
Otherwise, reports such as Ravi allegedly calling his IAS batch-mate (lady officer) 44 times on her mobile phone and she in turn “confessing” to the investigating team that she had been “harassed” over phone would not have appeared in just one section of the media. In a latest report, the police have contended that Ravi had urged the lady IAS officer to break her marriage!
It is clear now that the police’s revelations are becoming too personal and an impression is being created that he was “love struck”. Unfortunately, in the process, several other interesting facets to the case are getting buried. For instance, on Sunday, a day before his death, Ravi received calls from anonymous people and he was agitated. He broke into an argument with the caller.
His friends and father-in-law told Karnataka’s CID police that they were “threat calls” made by a male. The same person called him on Monday morning and once again Ravi lost his cool. Going by the police’s version, let’s presume imagine that the caller was the lady officer, then, why would Ravi lose his cool? The police’s claim is that he called her 44 times, but according to eye witness, on the contrary it was Ravi’s phone that rang continuously on Sunday.
The anonymous person further told him about a CD that was lying on his office table. What was the anonymous caller? What were the contents of the CD? Where is that CD now? These questions continue to remain unanswered till date with police deflecting the issue and harping on his alleged “affair”.
Former CM HD Kumaraswamy has added a new dimension to the case claiming that a senior IAS officer had called Ravi 20 days before his death to warn and threaten him. Kumaraswamy wanted to know why the police were restricting their probe to the calls between Ravi and the lady IAS officer. Which IAS officer had called Ravi and threatened him?
A section of the police too is disturbed with the developments. An officer told another section of the media that Ravi had called the lady officer only thrice on Monday and, as she missed the answering the calls, she returned the call later. With so much confusion prevailing, one may never get to know the truth.
This is the reason everyone is insisting for a CBI probe.
Another upsetting aspect of the case is that by selectively leaking information, the police have shown scant regard to Ravi’s family. The officer’s wife Kusuma, who is yet to come to terms with the loss of her husband, is being dragged around to defend the image of her deceased spouse. Despite Kusuma maintaining several times that the relationship between Ravi and his batch-mate did not extend beyond professional level, the all-out effort by the police to cast aspersions on the character of Ravi is worrying.
Day by day, the issue is not only getting murkier, but throwing up disturbing information that are clearly aimed at derailing the investigation and misleading the public. Siddaramaiah has taken time till Monday to come to a conclusion whether a CBI probe into the case is necessitated despite pleas from his wife, parents and father-in-law to hand over the case to the central agency at the earliest.
The Opposition parties feel that too much time has been lost, as one week is more than sufficient to place the investigation on a different track.
FP