BENGALURU: Sarvagnanagar MLA and former Home Minister K J George on Monday filed a defamation case against Ravi Krishna Reddy and N R Ramesh, president and general secretary of the Karnataka Rashtra Samithi, respectively, for making “baseless, deliberate, reckless, malicious and false allegations” against him.The criminal defamation case was filed against the two before a Special Court in the city.
In September this year, Reddy and Ramesh had reportedly submitted a detailed complaint with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against George with several annexures of his alleged properties outside India as proof.On November 11, they wrote another letter to the ED seeking prompt action against the Congress MLA under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). In his complaint to the ED, he had alleged, “George has held key portfolios in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government and the previous Congress-JDS coalition government. He has amassed huge properties in India and abroad, particularly in New York.”
Reddy had claimed that he had given a detailed description of the properties held by George and his family. “Most of the properties are in the name of George’s daughter Renita Abraham and son-in-law Kevin Abraham,” Reddy had said.In the complaint, George said, “The accused have mala fide intentions and to make political gains, they have chosen to defame me and spoil my reputation. The aforesaid allegations made by them are all false,” George said.
He also said the allegations were intentionally widely published in the media.“The publication of the defamatory statements has damaged my reputation among the public at large and the voters of his constituency Sarvagnanagar with the objective of preventing them from voting for the complainant in future elections and thus destroy his political career,” the complaint said.
Meanwhile, Reddy said they were not bothered by kind of cases against them. “We have spoken about only what was in the documents that have been given to the ED in our complaint. Only an ED investigation will bring out whether the complaint is baseless or not. We have seen George as minister for many years and how he got so much wealth. We want politicians to be clean and honest and not corrupt like him. We stand by our statements that is in the complaint,” he said.