Pramesh S Jain & Binish Thomas (Sub-Editor)
I
n a fresh FIR, kaggalipura police booked BJP MLA Munirathna on Wednesday and arrested on thursday morning as soon as he released from jail and was arrested for repeated rape,sexual harassment,and voyeurism following a complaint filed by a 40-year-old woman.
The victim,a social worker,accused Munirathna of raping her multiple times between 2020 and 2022 and threatened her into conspiring criminal offences with him.
Six more people identified as Vijay Kumar,Sudhakar, Kiran Kumar,Lohith Gowda,Manjunatha,and Loki have been named in the FIR for assisting Munirathna’s criminal conspiracies.
Kaggalipura police have invoked IPC sections 376 (repeated rape),354 (sexual harassment),354(C) (voyeurism),506 (criminal intimidation),504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace),120(B) (criminal conspiracy),149 (every member of an unlawful assembly guilty of an offence committed in prosecution of a common object),384 (extortion),406 (criminal breach of trust), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) and the IT Act in the FIR.
According to the FIR,Munirathna learnt about the victim through her social work and contacted her via WhatsApp in 2020.
A few days later, he met her in person near Muthyalanagar in north Bengaluru and befriended her, they subsequently developed a friendship by texting on Whatsapp.
According to the FIR,Munirathna allegedly asked the victim to strip on a video call, but the latter refused to do it.A few days later,he called the woman to his godown in Muthyala Nagar,where he allegedly made a sexual advance,prompting her to resist.
The woman claimed that Munirathna bragged about his political clout and raped her, threatening to fit her in a case if she refused compromise.
“He showed me the CCTV cameras installed in the godown and threatened to morph my pictures and make them viral if I didn’t listen to him and refused to do all his work,” the woman told police.
According to the FIR,Munirathna threatened her with the same videos and coaxed her into helping him honeytrap the husband of a former corporator by sending a woman with her.
Later,he revealed to her that the woman was an Aids-infected person.She claimed that he directed her to honeytrap the ex-corporator’s son as well,but she refused to do so and went incommunicado.
Further,Munirathna allegedly threatened her into making explicit videos of a leader from his rival party during the election and used it to threaten him.He also made similar videos of police officers and blackmailed them, according to the woman.
According to the FIR,Munirathna pleaded with the complainant to help him in damaging the image of Kavitha (name changed), a woman he knew,claiming it was the last help he would ask from her.
Munirathna allegedly formed a team (including four accused in the FIR) and arranged a birthday party where Kavitha was also invited.
Munirathna directed the complainant to befriend the Kavitha and get her number. Further, he asked the woman to develop friendship with Kavitha and invite her to resort trips.
In three separate trips, the team formed by Munirathna allegedly took private videos and pictures of the woman and also attempted to fit her in a criminal case.
Narrating all these incidents,the complainant requested the police to initiate an action against the BJP MLA.An FIR has been filed at Kaggalipura police station.
