Patil admits MLA Ganesh is hiding, police search on

Home Minister M B Patil on Wednesday candidly admitted that Kampli MLA J N Ganesh, who is facing the charge of attempting to murder Vijayanagara MLA Anand Singh during a drunken brawl at the Eagleton Resort, had indeed gone absconding, and that the police was trying to track him down.

“Whenever such things happen, they all (accused) take legal advice and abscond. As a result, the police face a little difficulty. The police, however, are on the lookout. It is not impossible to arrest him. We will arrest him at the earliest,” said Patil, while addressing the media in Bengaluru.

Patil also said that Ganesh would not spared. “Nobody is above the law. An FIR has already been lodged by Singh’s family, while the Congress party has taken disciplinary
action by suspending him. Such actions will not be tolerated either by the party and the government. It is a heinous act - we will not spare him,” he added.

Denying that there had been a systematic delay in Ganesh’s arrest owing to political pressure, Patil said that there would not be any interference in the police investigations.

“The police is doing their duty. Yes, he has not yet been arrested, but that doesn’t mean that they are sitting quiet. I want to make it clear that there is no interference by anyone. The government and the Home department are not under any pressure. We are taking necessary steps to arrest him,” he added.

On the contradictory statements given by the Congress leaders soon after the incident came to light, Patil said that including him, the other leaders too realised the seriousness only after they visited Singh at the hospital.

On January 20, Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar had said that Singh had left the Eagleton Resort to attend a wedding, even after it was established that the MLA had been hospitalised.

His brother and Congress MP D K Suresh had said that Singh had admitted himself following chest pain. The brothers had maintained that the MLAs had not come to blows. Wakf Minister Zameer Ahmed Khan was the only one to have conceded that Singh had been injured in a drunken brawl. He had however dismissed it as a “small incident” between friends.