4th mystery death case to be handed over to CBI

 The D K Ravi case is only the fourth case of murder/unnatural death referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the State government over the decades.

Though the CBI has probed scores of cases pertaining to corruption, financial irregularities, fraud and other crimes reported in the State, it has so far investigated only three cases of murder, that of Kerala-based advocate H Abdul Rashid (1987), Bhatkal MLA U Chittaranjan (1996) and a PUC student Sowjanya (2012). As in the latest case, the governments of the day were forced to hand over the three high-profile murder cases to the Central agency following a public outcry for a CBI probe.

The first case referred to the CBI by the Karnataka government was the sensational murder of Rashid in 1987, when the Ramakrishna Hegde government was in office. The then home minister R L Jalappa was accused of abetting the murder and he was arraigned as an accused along with a senior IPS officer and several policemen attached to the High Grounds police station in Bengaluru.

Later, all of them were acquitted by the court as there were “infirmities” in the prosecution case. Also, there was “no connecting link between the murder and the accused.”

According to the CBI, P Sadasivan of Kerala, who was running an educational society here, and Jalappa were at loggerheads as both were trying to get approvals for starting medical colleges in Kolar. As advocate Rashid was “strongly defending” Sadasivan’s cases in Karnataka, Jalappa had got Rashid kidnapped and murdered, the prosecution had charged.

Rashid, as per the charge sheet, was kidnapped from Sandhya Lodge in the High Grounds police limits in Bengaluru on August 16, 1987. Two days later, his body was found at a spot between Danishpet and Lokur in Salem district of Tamil Nadu. The Salem sessions court had convicted the then DCP (West) K Narayana and six other policemen. Later, the Madras High Court acquitted them.

In the second case, Dr Chittaranjan, a BJP MLA, was shot dead on the night of April 10, 1996, while he was watching television at his house in the communally sensitive Bhatkal town in Uttara Kannada district. The then H D Deve Gowda government sought a CBI investigation into the killing, the first case of an MLA being murdered in the State.

Though nearly two decades have passed, the CBI has neither established the motive behind his murder nor arrested the killers.

In 2005, the CBI sought the permission of the Judicial Magistrate First Class court in Bhatkal to close the case and file a ‘C’ report, as the culprits had not been traced.
The court rejected its request after S Doreraju, the counsel for the slain MLA’s family, opposed the CBI plea and requested the court to direct the investigation agency to continue the inquiry.

As for the third case, the CBI is still probing Sowjanya’s rape and murder. Sowjanya (17), a student of SDM College in Ujjire in Dakshina Kannada, was raped and killed on her way back home from college on October 9, 2012.

The case was referred to the CBI in November 2013. The CID, which had till then investigated the case, stated there was no truth in the accusation that the family of prominent religious leader Veerendra Heggade of Dharmasthala was involved in the murder.