IAS officer DK Ravi death: How Karnataka CM and team have blundered

If there is someone who has not covered himself with glory in the DK Ravi case, it is Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and Co. Yes, the man who thinks he cannot put a foot wrong, looks like the head of a government that cannot get even the basics right. And not just him but the entire Congress camp with its inept handling of this high-profile case, is looking like Alice in Blunderland.

Sample this :

1. The CM admitted that he transferred DK Ravi out of Kolar at the request of his father-in-law, Hanumantharayappa, a Congress politician. Does it reflect well on the CM to admit that this is the way he runs his government? That he goes by recommendations by fellow netas to decide who will be posted where. Have you heard about the best person for each job, Mr CM?

2. Congress leader PC Chacko came up with this incredible piece of logic. "The CID has to complete its investigation and if that investigation is not satisfactory, then naturally a CBI investigation can be requested," he told ANI. "Satisfactory" for who, Mr Chacko?

3. The Karnataka government, within hours of transferring the case to the CID, shifted IG (CID) Pronab Mohanty to a new post as IG (Lokayukta). Didn't anyone in the corridors of powers in the Vidhana Soudha have the brains to see how the decision will be judged? I am told the decision to transfer Mohanty was taken prior to the decision to give the Ravi case to the CID but anyone with some common sense would have had the sense to stop it, so that the state didn't look as if it was trying to do some hanky-panky. Not only that. In one stroke, it made it seem as if Mohanty is the tough cop who has been shunted out and replaced by a "pliable" Pratap Reddy. While the fact of the matter is that, I am told, both are extremely competent, no-nonsense, tough officers. (Now after having got flak, the state government is believed to have told Mohanty not to report to Lokayukta)

4. Siddaramaiah's home minister, who finds himself in a tight spot thanks to his connections with a real-estate group, should never have pronounced his verdict that "it is a suicide" in the Assembly. No one was asking him to play the cop in the House.

The preliminary post-mortem report suggests it is a case of suicide. Senior police officers who surveyed the scene, and have a reputation for integrity, say it is without a trace of doubt, a case of suicide. If Bangalore police commissioner MN Reddi was wrong in saying "prima facie, it looks like a case of suicide", so were the media persons who thrust the mike at him and asked him what he thought "prima facie". Reddi has spent enough years in the profession to get a sense of what it could be. For heaven's sake, he is not an amateur detective. And besides, he very clearly said what it looked to be. He was not giving an opinion with a ring of finality to it.

In fact, the media should have been more vigilant vis-a-vis Ravi's father-in-law who, I suspect, is trying to throw everyone off the trail. Hanumantharayappa named a Congress MLA as the person who was threatening Ravi during his stint as DC, Kolar and therefore he made the CM transfer Ravi to Bangalore. Indeed, sources say the MLA who apparently was at the receiving end of Ravi's clean-up drive, celebrated his exit by distributing sweets in Kolar and even tonsuring his head in Tirumala.

But then Hanumantharayappa himself is contractor-politician who made his riches by bagging several government contracts. Is he settling some old scores by pointing the needle of suspicion at a fellow businessman-politician? Besides, if the MLA threatened Ravi in Kolar, how does it have relevance in Ravi's death five months later in a different city? The only point it proves is that vested interests were not happy with Ravi's work in Kolar.

Why Hanumantharayappa's outburst cannot be taken at face value is because there is also a lot spoken about in hush-hush tones about personal reasons being the real reason for Ravi to take the extreme step. That Ravi's relations with his father-in-law weren't great. That he perhaps was putting pressure on Ravi through his wife Kusuma, to go slow on cases involving his friends and that could have been a point of difference between husband and wife.

Another angle being probed is Ravi's apparent close friendship with a fellow officer. This, if sources are to be believed, was creating fissures in his marriage. That he and his wife spoke for a period of 9,556 seconds (roughly two and a half hours, in different conversations) on March 14 and 15. This, cops feel, is unusually high and take as an indication of an argument.

But having landed up with a lot of egg over the manner in which it has handled this case since Monday evening, the Karnataka government and police realise that speaking about it will be interpreted as trying to pull a fast one. But politicians aren't happy as the tribe is being pilloried as having pushed Ravi to his death.

What the Karnataka government needs to do is to convince everyone that it is doing the right thing. As a first step, it needs to constitute a SIT, headed by an officer of high integrity and let the team finish the probe as soon as possible. Given the political overtones of handing over the case to the CBI, it is an option that will not serve much purpose.

And finally, Siddaramaiah needs to realise that public image is a 24x7 exercise. Confidence is a positive, over-confidence and arrogance are suicidal.