Fear and political power enjoyed by the family was used to force women to submit to him, the first two chargesheets filed against former Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna have indicated.
According to sources in the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the allegations of rape against Prajwal Revanna, all the victims have in their complaints said that they feared the power of the family.
That fear prevented them from even mentioning it to Prajwal’s mother Bhavani Revanna. “They were all in awe and fear of the Revanna family. The sheer fear of the family using their power to suppress them, or in the case of Prajwal, of exposing them using the videos, kept them under the cloud of fear and silenced them,” a senior SIT official told News18 on condition of anonymity.
The SIT has so far received complaints from four survivors of rape allegedly by Prajwal. There is one complaint against Prajwal and his father, HD Revanna, JDS leader and MLA, of sexual assault and kidnapping. The sixth complaint is of alleged kidnapping against Bhavani Revanna.
In the second and latest chargesheet that has been filed, Prajwal Revanna has been charged under section 376 (2) (K) for “being in a position of control or dominance over a woman, committing rape on a woman,” 376 (2) (n) for “committing rape repeatedly on the same woman,” 354 for outraging the modesty of a woman under the IPC, and various sections of the IT Act 2000.
The first two chargesheets were filed on August 24 and September 9 respectively. The police will file filing a chargesheet for each of the four FIRs filed by survivors against Prajwal Revanna. In the two chargesheets already filed, one of the survivors is in her late fifties and another is in her late forties, both of whom are farm labourers who doubled up as housemaids in the Hassan Gannikada farmhouse as well as in the Bengaluru house.
‘Prajwal Forced Himself on The Victim’
In the second chargesheet, it has been alleged that the farmhouse where the first assault occurred is in the name of Suraj Revanna, Prajwal’s elder brother. According to the narration of events, the incident took place eight years ago. The victim, along with her husband, approached Suraj Revanna for a job at the farmhouse. They were given jobs and provided accommodation in the servant quarters attached to the farmhouse. Prajwal and Suraj visited the farmhouse frequently.
The chargesheet reads that just before the Covid lockdown in 2021, Prajwal Revanna visited the farmhouse while the victim was cleaning a room. Prajwal called her and asked her to bring him a glass of water. When she entered the room, Prajwal pushed her inside and closed the door.
Frightened, she asked him to open the door, but he refused, forcibly undressed her, and demanded she comply. The victim pleaded to be released, but he ignored her and said, “Nothing will happen,” before forcing himself on her, according to the chargesheet. She fell to the ground, and while forcing himself on her, Prajwal used one hand to record a video of the assault on his phone. He then pushed her on to the bed and raped her, as stated in the chargesheet.
The same victim was allegedly raped a second time in 2021 at the Basavanagudi house in Bengaluru, the private residence of Prajwal’s father, HD Revanna. The victim, along with her younger sister, was brought to Bengaluru by Bhavani Revanna, Prajwal’s mother, to clean the house. The house has three floors, and they were assigned the task of cleaning it, according to the chargesheet.
While cleaning the third floor, Prajwal called the victim inside, asking her to take away some soiled clothes for washing. Fearing him, she hesitated, prompting Prajwal to shout at her for not attending to her duties. When she entered the room, he once again latched the door and told her to undress. He reassured her that “nothing will happen” and took out his phone to record the scene. The victim stood frozen in fear, but Prajwal forcibly threw her on to the bed. She begged to use the washroom, but he refused and continued to assault and rape her, as stated in the chargesheet.
A third attempt was made by Prajwal a few months later, but this time, the victim managed to escape. Once again, he had asked for water and tried to pull her close, but she ran away. The next day, she and her husband were dismissed from their jobs, and they left the servants’ quarters overnight.
In both incidents, Prajwal allegedly blackmailed the victim, threatening to send the videos to her son if she did not comply with his demands. He also threatened her life, which kept her silent. The chargesheet includes forensic science laboratory reports confirming that the man in the video was Prajwal. Through audio and video analysis, the body parts visible in the footage were confirmed to belong to him.
Allegations Against Revanna Family
The SIT, which is probing four cases of sexual assault and harassment against the 33-year-old former MP, submitted the first chargesheet of 2,144 pages to the Special court Representatives in Bengaluru on August 24. This chargesheet, including statements from 150 witnesses, accused HD Revanna of sexually assaulting a domestic worker at his Holenarasipura home from 2019 to 2022.
Prajwal is charged with raping the same woman at their Basavanagudi residence in Bengaluru. The chargesheet has further alleged that Prajwal coerced the woman’s daughter to undress during video calls, which he secretly recorded. In an FIR filed on April 28 with the Holenarasipura police, HD Revanna is listed as the first accused, followed by Prajwal.
HD Revanna has also been charged with sexual harassment under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code. He was arrested on May 4 and later released on bail. One of the survivors, a housemaid, was allegedly kidnapped and held captive at a Revanna family farmhouse. She escaped and filed a statement accusing HD Revanna of abducting her to silence her. He was arrested on May 5 for the kidnapping and later released on bail. His wife Bhavani Revanna’s and Prajwal’s mother, has also been accused of involvement in the abduction. She has applied for anticipatory bail and the matter is pending in the Supreme Court.
Four victims have recorded statements with the SIT, including two farmhands and housemaids who alleged being raped while being recorded. A JDS worker also accused Prajwal of raping her in his official quarters in Hassan, recording the act, and blackmailing her into further sexual encounters between January 2021 and April 2024.
A homemaker seeking school admission for her son became the fourth woman to accuse Prajwal of sexual harassment. She filed an FIR ten days after his arrest on May 31, following several complaints. She alleged that Prajwal had requested her phone number during a meeting about her son’s admission and soon began coercing her into virtual sex through video calls. This allegedly occurred 8 to 10 times between October 2019 and 2020, with threats to release the recordings if she refused.
The Congress government in Karnataka set up the SIT on April 28 to investigate the alleged video clips of sexual abuse involving Prajwal, who had fled to Germany soon after polling in the Lok Sabha election on April 26. Pen drives were dumped in various parts of Hassan just before polling day. He later returned to India on May 31 having absconded for over a month, after his grandfather and former PM, HD Deve Gowda appealed to him to surrender before the law. He was arrested at the Bengaluru international airport on his arrival.
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