Prajwal Revanna sexual assault case | Power play, politics, and perversion Premium

Article details rape and abuse allegations against politician Prajwal Revanna in Karnataka, sparking protests and investigations.

Trigger warning: The following article contains references to rape and abuse. Please avoid reading if you are triggered by these themes.

On the morning of April 22, a resident of Hassan in south Karnataka was walking along the tracks of the district stadium, about 190 km from Bengaluru, when he noticed a pen drive placed on a pedestal. He ignored it at first, but then curiosity got the better of him. He picked up the pen drive and gave it to a friend, he said.

That was not the only pen drive in the stadium. Others said they noticed 8-10 pen drives in different areas of the same stadium. Walkers in Maharaja’s Park in the heart of Hassan said they had also spotted pen drives on the benches.

As the day went by, it became clear that it was raining pen drives in Hassan. When people downloaded the content, they found sexually explicit video clips, photos, and screenshots of video calls. Soon, this went viral. The women in the photos and videos were clearly visible, but the man was not. However, he could be seen partially in the screenshots of the video calls he made to the women.

The man is allegedly Prajwal Revanna, the Janata Dal (Secular) [JD(S)] Member of Parliament from Hassan and the grandson of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda. He is the candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. The Hassan Lok Sabha constituency was scheduled to go to the polls in the second phase, four days later, on April 26.

There were at least two clips in which the women could be seen resisting the man’s advances and pleading with him even as he raped them while recording the act. One of them was later allegedly abducted by Prajwal’s father H.D. Revanna, who is a former Minister, and MLA of Holenarsipur, the home town of the Gowda clan.

Editorial | Sexual crimes and videos: On the Prajwal Revanna case in Karnataka