Bengaluru, (DHNS): A senior government official was reportedly summoned to the official residence of the Lokayukta, Justice Y Bhaskar Rao, and later to a star hotel, where he was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 1 crore.
On April 20, 2015, a certain Krishna Rao, the self-proclaimed secretary of Justice Rao, reportedly called the official and told him to come to the Lokayukta’s official residence on Sankey Road.
Unaware of the reason for the summons, the official went to the Lokayukta’s residence around 6 pm on April 21, which was a government holiday on account of Basava Jayanti.
The official told Deccan Herald: “I first got a call from a mobile number 88……60 asking me to come to the Lokayukta’s residence. The man who spoke to me on the phone said that honourable Lokayukta wanted to meet me. I went to the official residence and the person who had called me, received me and introduced himself as Krishna Rao.
“The person in his late forties, claimed that he was the personal secretary to Justice Rao ever since he was the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court. After a brief chat, Krishna Rao said there were a lot of complaints against me made to the Lokayukta office. I was shocked to hear this but told him an inquiry could be taken up if there were complaints.”
Immediately, the official said, he was ushered into an adjacent room to meet someone else.
“Another person in his forties introduced himself as Ashwin Rao. He claimed to be a close relative of the Lokayukta. He only enquired about my department’s functioning and my responsibilities. It was a brief meeting after which I was asked to meet Krishna Rao again. To my surprise, Krishna Rao asked whether I had settled the issue with Ashwin. When I asked him to be specific, Krishna Rao asked me to leave since a senior IAS officer of Additional Chief Secretary rank had just walked in. I was asked to wait for some days,” he said.
However, the official said he was not aware if the Lokayukta was present in the house when he had gone there.
On April 25, following a phone call from Krishna Rao, the official met him at a star hotel on Race Course Road. In the hotel lobby, Krishna Rao is said to have spoken about his family background, that he was from Malur taluk of Kolar district, before asking the official to pay Rs one crore to settle cases against him. When the official told him that he didn’t have such a huge sum, he scaled down the amount to Rs 50 lakh and then to Rs 25 lakh.
“When I expressed my inability again, he took the phone number of a particular colleague of mine and asked me to come back after some days.”
However, there were no more calls from Krishna Rao to the official. This was apparently due to the incident of the demand for bribe by Executive Engineer Krishnamurthy at the Lokayukta office on May 5, which sent Krishna Rao and his team into a tizzy.
With Lokayukta police launching a full-fledged investigation into corruption within the institution, it has emerged that Krishna Rao had called several public servants. However, the true identity of Krishna Rao is still not known.
We need one more department called ಪರ ಲೋಕ ಆಯುಕ್ತ to supervise ಲೋಕ ಆಯುಕ್ತ