BENGALURU: RTI activist Venkatesh S, alias Maamaiah, who was brutally attacked by an armed five-member gang near his farmhouse in Tavarekere off Magadi Road on Thursday afternoon, succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon.
The 43-year-old couldn’t survive even after a surgery was performed to reattach his severed limbs.
His right arm and right leg had been severed in the attack. The gang members had escaped, leaving him in a pool of blood when passers-by rushed him to a nearby private hospital, from where he was taken to Hosmat Hospital, where he underwent a complicated surgery, that continued till the wee hours of Friday.
After the surgery, Venkatesh was in the ICU unit of the hospital and was kept under observation, especially due to severe loss of blood after the attack.
The activist’s brother, Govindraju S, told The New Indian Express that the doctors declared Venkatesh dead at 2.30 pm on Sunday after he failed to respond to the treatment.
His last rites will be performed at his Tavarekere farmhouse on Monday, after which the family plans to stage a protest in front of Tavarekere police station, for making neither any progress in the investigation nor any arrests, even after three days of the attack.
A senior police officer who is privy to the probe into the case — which has now become a case of murder — admitted that they had failed to achieve any breakthrough in the case so far, but said an arrest will be made in a couple of days.
Special teams have been sent to Tamil Nadu and Kerala as part of a manhunt launched by the police.
Police are investigating motives behind the attack and are probing into the RTI applications by Venkatesh to expose corruption in the government, besides his alleged financial dispute and an ongoing personal issue.
Govindaraju brought attention to Venkatesh’s recent RTI application over the construction of a building on government land, but the activist had failed to get the relevant documents, he said.
While the family members are sure the motive has to do with his RTI applications and that the police need to focus on that, the latter said preliminary investigations revealed no such links.
They are probing into financial and personal issues — which, according to the police, includes an extra-marital affair — to get to the plotters of the attack and those who carried it out.