The saga of Karnataka Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi’s alleged involvement in sexually harassing a ‘job aspirant’ and issuing threats to her and her family took a fresh turn on Wednesday when the parents of the woman lodged a complaint with the Belagavi police saying their daughter had been kidnapped from Bengaluru and now they fear for their lives. Here’s a timeline of scandal that has rocked the political corridors of Karnataka:
• On March 2, some Kannada news channels showed clippings of the then Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi with a woman, who, it was claimed, was a ‘job aspirant’ subjected to sexual harassment by the minister.
• A day after the video surfaced, Jarkiholi was forced to resign from his position as minister and was accused of seeking sex for favours.
• Dinesh Kallahalli, a social activist, approached the Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant and after the meeting told reporters that he has been asked to approach the Cubbon Park Police Station to lodge the complaint and to get an FIR registered there. He later filed a complaint at Cubbon Park in central Bengaluru.
• Kallahalli said the woman did not wish to come out in the open and approached him to lodge a complaint alleging the minister exploited her by offering a job. In the complaint, Kallahalli said when the woman from a poor family approached the minister for making a short film, he had sexually exploited her by assuring a job in the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited. He alleged that when the minister got to know that the woman had the ‘CD’ (objectionable videos), he threatened her and her family.
• However, Kallahalli made an ‘U-turn’ and withdrew the complaint a few days later.
• On March 9, Jarkiholi told media persons that he was innocent and that the purported CD was “100% fake”. In his 18-minute-long interaction with media persons, he claimed that this whole issue was a conspiracy against him. He also claimed that he was aware about the CD much in advance and had even informed the high command regarding the same. “There is no truth in this CD. It’s a conspiracy and I’m innocent. In fact, I got to know about the CD four month’s back and told my brother Balachandra that I had done nothing wrong and it wasn’t me. I even got a call from high command asking to legal help. But I said I would fight it out,” the Belgavi MLA claimed.
• Jarkiholi said the whole conspiracy was strategised around the Orion Mall and Yeshwanthpur areas of Bengaluru. He approached Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa and Home Minister Basavaj Bommai, asking the government to hand over the case to the CID at the earliest.
• On March 13, Bengaluru police registered a case of conspiracy and blackmailing, among other charges, against unknown persons based on a complaint by Jarkiholi, who resigned as the water resources minister after a CD purportedly showed him seeking sexual favours from a woman in exchange for a job.
• In the complaint, Jarkiholi did not name anyone one but charged some people with an intention to extort money and defame him. He said a conspiracy had been hatched against him over the past three months to finish him off politically and blackmail him. “There are many people involved in it. Among them, a few hatched the conspiracy, became part of preparing the fake CD, and released it on the internet to create political instability,” Jarkiholi said in his statement.
• The same day, the woman in the sex tape scandal released a video statement in Kannada, saying, “This message is for Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai. I don’t know how, and what they did with the video. I have already been stripped of my dignity everywhere. People are coming home and questioning me. My parents tried to kill themselves two times. I, too, tried to kill myself three to four times,” the woman said. the parents of a woman who was allegedly seen with former state minister Ramesh Jarakiholi in videos that were widely shared this month, lodged a complaint with the Belagavi police alleging that they are fearing for their life and that their daughter had been kidnapped from Bengaluru.
• On March 17, the parents of the woman lodged a complaint with the Belagavi police saying their daughter had been kidnapped from Bengaluru and now they fear for their lives. The father claimed that his daughter had been kidnapped on March 2 itself – the day the CD emerged in public — and that was the last time they had spoken with her. “She said the person in the video was not her. Someone seems to have used our daughter’s doppelganger. She told her mother that someone who looks like her has been used in the video,” the father said.
• A two-minute video clip was released by the parents in which they claimed their lives are is in danger. ” I spoke to her the last time on March 2. She said she would explain everything in detail when she meets us in person instead of speaking on the phone,” the woman’s mother said in the clip.
• The police booked the parents’ complaint under sections 363 (kidnapping), 368, 343, 346 (dealing with wrongful confinement) 354 (assault) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
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