All of Hassan now feels like a crime scene. Allegations against HD Revanna & son Prajwal sent a chill down the spine of residents, who lived under a blanket of silence for decades.
For the woman in her late 40s, it was a day like any other. She was cleaning her employer’s room at his residence in South Bengaluru’s posh Basavanagudi area. The next thing she remembers is her employer Prajwal Revanna entering the room, bolting the door behind him and allegedly forcing himself on her.
“If you don’t do as I say, I’ll get your daughter raped, and kill you and your husband,” he told her, as narrated by her daughter to ThePrint over the phone. Prajwal did not stop there. He then allegedly preyed on the daughter, forcing her to strip on video call.
The woman and her daughter said they endured this “torture” silently for years. “They (Revanna family) threw us out of our home, got us beaten up by our relatives, abused us and now we are left with nothing,” said the daughter, her words punctuated with sobs.
At the time, there was no way they could have challenged the authority of the Revanna family. Such was the sense of fear in Hassan, the Janata Dal (Secular) bastion where Revanna family ran its writ over all matters of land, caste and local administration.
The villages of Hassan, hidden behind swathes of coconut trees in the lap of Kalappanahalli hills, are now in full glare of the country. There is little room for doubt that the most prevalent emotion the Revanna family elicits here is not respect or adulation, but ‘fear’. Residents compare the family’s rule here with that of the most infamous dictators in history and mythology — ‘Aurangzeb’, ‘Mussolini’, ‘Saddam Hussein’ and even ‘Duryodhana’.
In the last week of April, circulation of thousands of videos of sexual assault of women, allegedly recorded by JD(S) MP from Hassan Prajwal Revanna, rocked the district.
His father H.D. Revanna stands accused of ordering the abduction of a woman who was allegedly raped by Prajwal. She was the same woman seen pleading in one of the videos. “Beda Anna, bitbidi (please brother, spare me),” she can be heard saying.
A family member of the woman, who was allegedly kidnapped and later fled to safety last week, said the woman was also raped at Prajwal’s residence in Basavanagudi in Bengaluru and the family farm in Hassan.
In the FIR based on a complaint by the woman in her late 40s mentioned earlier, Prajwal currently faces the charge of sexual harassment. Charges of rape could be added on the basis of her supplementary statement.
Speaking to ThePrint, the woman alleged she was also molested by H.D. Revanna, details of which she has shared with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe allegations against both JD(S) leaders.
“I have been getting threatening phone calls from the family of Bhavani Revanna to drop the case,” said the woman, adding that the SIT has made arrangements to ensure her safety and that of her family. She added that she dreamt of taking back the house her family built painstakingly and which was allegedly snatched by the Revanna family.
Karnataka State Commission for Women Chief Dr S. Nagalakshmi told ThePrint that “more and more women are establishing contact with the SIT, which is conducting this investigation with utmost confidentiality to protect the identities of the victims”.