HASSAN: A fracas over a local BJP leader and his associates ‘disturbing’ a dinner party attended by all seven tahsildars of Hassan district at the government Inspection Bungalow (IB) in Holenarsipur resulted in the former being arrested and the officers being issued notices by the district deputy commissioner.
The Holenarasipur police arrested district BJP Youth Morcha president Nagesh and party workers Ashok, Ramegowda and Sunil and booked cases against them under IPC Sections 147,148, 503,504,149 and 323 on a direction from Holenarasipur Tahsildar Srinivas for allegedly disturbing a dinner party he had hosted on Friday night, where alcohol too was allegedly consumed. They were released on station bail on Saturday afternoon.
According to the police, Nagesh and the three others went to the IB in Holenarsipur to stay over for the night after attending a dinner hosted by BJP leader and retired IAS officer Puttaswamy. However, the IB staffer on night duty refused to hand over the keys to the room which Nagesh had booked earlier, on the instructions of the tahsildar, police said.
Irked by this, Nagesh and his friends went to the room where Srinivas and his colleagues Santosh Kumar (Arasikere tahsildar), Maruti (Channarayapatna), Rakshit (Sakleshpur), Shivaraj (Arkalgud), Meghana Gowda (Hassan) and Shirin Taj (Alur) were having dinner. Nagesh allegedly lambasted the tahsildars for trying to ‘assault’ him. Angered by this, Srinivas and the other tahsildars took Nagesh and his friends to task for trespassing.
When the situation turned ugly, police arrived at the scene and took Nagesh and his friends into custody. At this juncture, barring Srinivas, all the other tahsildars left in their officials vehicles. Srinivas said he directed the police to arrest Nagesh and his friends after they barged into his room and started to videograph them. Nagesh also abused him in foul language, he claimed.
A source said all the seven tahsildars were batchmates during the Karnataka Administrative Service (KAS) training and had decided to have a get-together.
Speaking to TNSE, district Deputy Commissioner R Girish said that he has issued individual notices to all the tahsildars seeking explanation about the incident on the directions of N Manjunatha Prasad, principal secretary to the Revenue department. “Government officers having a cocktail dinner at a government guest house is not acceptable behaviour,” he said. The DC has given them three days to reply and said the future course of action will be decided based on that.
The issue quickly spread across the district and also on social media. State JDS president H K Kumaraswamy said that it is not fair that government officials hold a dinner party at a government inspection bungalow and added that the guilty should be punished.