BENGALURU: Taking serious exception to the conduct of the Lokayukta Police, the special court to try cases against sitting and former MPs/MLAs has issued a show cause notice to the investigation officer (IO) for failing to conduct a fresh probe into the allegations against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in a bribery case, though the IO was directed to do so six months ago.
Noting that the Lokayukta Police did not bother to conduct the probe despite its directive issued on February 21, the court passed this order and marked a copy to the SP of Lokayukta to instruct the IO to comply with it. Investigating officer Thippeswamy HJ told the court that he was not informed about the directive and submitted that he could not obey it due to miscommunication. Taking exception to this, Judge Santhosh Gajanan Bhat ordered issue of the show cause notice and adjourned the hearing to September 12.
In his petition, former BBMP councillor NR Ramesh protested against the ‘B’ report filed by the Lokayukta Police. He alleged that Siddaramaiah, during his first stint as CM, received a cheque for Rs 1.3 crore on July 28, 2014, as bribe from L Vivekananda alias King’s Court Vivek, managing director of Vivek Hotels, Mysuru, to appoint him as steward of Bengaluru Turf Club Limited.Based on this, the court issued a directive to register a private complaint and called for a status report from the Lokayukta Police. On June 7, 2023, the Deputy SP, Karnataka Lokayukta, filed a closure report contending that “there was no act of quid-pro-quo made out against the accused”.