HC adjourns Halappa's bail plea till May 13

Moving the bail application, senior counsel Ravi B Naik said the video had been tampered as if to make it appear as a rape case and the woman and her husband had falsely implicated Halappa to tarnish his reputation.

Naik argued that there were differences between the FIR and the purported video footage, claimed to have been shot by Chandravathy's husband last November.
Justice B V Pinto, adjourning the hearing on the bail application to May 13, directed the public prosecutor to file objections, if any on that day. Halappa was arrested on May 9 after Chandravathy and her financier husband Venkatesh Murthy filed a police complaint alleging she was raped at their residence in Shimoga, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa's home district.

After the rape charge surfaced, Halappa quit from the ministry but has denied the allegation saying it was a political conspiracy. Halappa, who has been remanded to judicial custody till May 24, is in a hospital after he complained of chest pain immediately after his arrest.

Meanwhile, Murthy today faced a complaint of bigamy from his estranged wife Sumitra, who filed a petition before a local court accusing him of marrying Chandrawathy without seeking proper divorce.

Judge Ravikanth admitted the petition seeking action against Murthy, who has been behind Chandrawathy filing the rape case against Halappa, five months after the alleged incident took place in Shimoga.

Sumitra in her petition submitted that Murthy, who was working as a money lender, had married her 14 years ago and later abandoned her after getting two children. Murthy had ill treated her and tortured her, she alleged.

When she refused to stay with him, village elders held an arbitration and directed Murthy to pay some compensation to Sumitra and allowed her to have one of their children to live with her, the petition said.

Subsequently Murthy with out informing Sumitra or getting proper divorce from her married Chandravathy, she said.