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BJP MLA, former union minister, and critic of the BJP government in Karnataka Basanagouda Patil Yatnal has claimed that a crusade against drug use carried out by the Bengaluru police in 2020 was part of an attempt to find and delete controversial videos of prominent leaders.
“The raids on actresses (in 2020) were not about drugs. Using the excuse of drugs it was an exercise to delete videos of the son of a prominent person. The police seized the electronic devices of the heroines and obtained the videos and then deleted them. It was not a campaign against drugs but an attempt to delete controversial videos of leaders,” Yatnal told reporters in Vijayapura Sunday.
Yatnal also claimed that nothing was going to emerge from the police probe of ‘Santro Ravi’ a sex trafficking offender arrested by the police last week who is linked to politicians and policemen in Karnataka. `Santro Ravi’ is alleged to have facilitated police transfers through his political links in the BJP government in Karnataka.
“Nothing is going to emerge from the Santro Ravi case. There was a case of an astrologer Yuvaraj (who was arrested in 2020 by the Bengaluru police and is accused in a series of cheating cases of promising high positions in the government to individuals including a retired high court judge on payment of large amounts). Why was Yuvaraj arrested? There were clippings with actresses,” Yatnal alleged.
The BJP MLA is currently locked in a war of words with the party’s Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani and had in the past often attacked senior leader B S Yediyurappa and his son Vijayendra when Yediyurappa was the chief minister of Karnataka.
The BJP MLA last week called Murugesh Nirani a “pimp”. “There is a pimp minister and he is doing the work of a pimp. It is his business,” Yatnal said at a public rally. Yatnal has often accused Nirani of using a movement launched by the Panchamasali Lingayat community for reservations as a vehicle for his own political growth.
The minister issued a warning to the MLA that his tongue would be cut off if he did not exercise restraint. The minister’s brother Sangameshwar Nirani called Yatnal a `Shikhandi’ and claimed that the Vijayapura MLA would soon be exposed before his constituency.
“If he does not control his tongue then there will come a time when his tongue will have to be cut off. If he is born to his father let him withdraw a stay order he has obtained. He had a driver called Kumar earlier. He was murdered. Why was he murdered? Let him explain. If he has no respect for the party then why is he in the party, let him get out,” minister Nirani said.
`”Yatnal is a senior leader of the party. It is not befitting to his stature to speak in a loose manner. We are not scared of him. He is a senior leader of the party and a former union minister and so we are keeping quiet,” said another Panchamasali minister C C Patil.
Despite his frequent outbursts against the BJP government, Yatnal has rarely been reprimanded by the BJP suggesting he is being supported from within the party leadership. This was a cause of anger for former CM Yediyurappa when he was in power.
Before Yediyurappa was asked to step down as the chief minister in July 2021 and was replaced by the current CM Basavaraj Bommai, Yatnal had predicted that the BJP leadership would replace Yediyurappa with a “leader who is honest, pro-Hindu and capable of bringing the party to power in the next polls”.
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