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Ex-Karnataka minister arrested by CBI in BJP worker’s murder case
After a nine-hour interrogation, Vinay Kulkarni was arrested, produced before a magistrate who remanded him in judicial custody. Kulkarni has been shifted to Belgavi’s Hindalga jail by the authorities.
Senior Congress leader and former minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet Vinay Kulkarni was arrested on Thursday from his residence at Barakotri in Dharwad district by the CBI probing the 2016 murder of a BJP Zilla Panchayat member Yogesh Gowda.
On June 15, 2016, Yogesh Gowda, a vocal critic of Kulkarni, had been hacked to death by five miscreants at Saptapur in Dharwad while exercising in a gym in a matter allegedly related to a property dispute. The CCTV installed on premises had captured the entire act. The five miscreants had been identified as close associates of the then minister Kulkarni.
The BJP, which raised a hue and cry over the murder, handed over the case to the CBI in September last year after coming back to power in the state. In March, six people - Basvaraj Shivappa, Vikram Ballari, Keerti Kumar, Sandeep Saudatti, Vinayak K and Mahableshwar Hongal - had been arrested in connection with the murder.
Kulkarni was detained in the morning by a six-member CBI team led by officer Rakesh Ranjan.
After a nine-hour interrogation, he was arrested, produced before a magistrate who remanded him in judicial custody. Kulkarni has been shifted to Belgavi’s Hindalga jail by the authorities.
Even as Karnataka home minister Basvaraj Bommai defended the CBI move, saying that the law was just taking its course and Gowda’s wife Mallama welcomed the arrest, Kulkarni, in a brief statement to the media, claimed that the arrest was politically motivated. He received support from Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar. who said that central agencies were being misused to target opposition leaders.
“The case had been investigated and closed by the local police more than two years back. The reopening and arrest of Kulkarni today is nothing but political vendetta,” Shivakumar said.
The handing over of the case to the CBI was a promise made by the BJP even during the 2018 assembly polls.
