Bengaluru: A Bengaluru court has held that former Janata Dal (S) parliamentarian Prajwal Revanna’s crimes were not only “heinous” but compounded by his “abuse of power,” repeated sexual violence, and the “lasting trauma” inflicted on the survivor.
While awarding Revanna the maximum sentence of life imprisonment following his conviction for the offence of rape last week, sessions judge Santosh Gajanana Bhat, in his 480 page judgement, held that as a sitting MP, Revanna wielded his political and social dominance to violate a woman employed in his household, coercing her into silence through “fear, shame, and manipulation.”
The court found no mitigating factors, only aggravating ones, while sentencing the former MP. It noted that Revanna did not show remorse and offered no explanation for his conduct. Revanna’s “social and political influence” aggravated the power imbalance, the court said. It thus, ruled that the “gravity of the offences demanded the harshest punishment permitted by law”. This, the court said, was essential not just for retribution, but to send an “unequivocal message” that no one, not even the powerful, is above accountability when it comes to crimes against women.
“While Indian society is built on the ideal of revering women, a horrifying incident in 2024, where obscene and vulgar images violating the personal liberty of respectable women went viral and were circulated via pen drive, shocked the public conscience and prompted the Karnataka government to form a special investigation team,” the court said.
{{/usCountry}}“While Indian society is built on the ideal of revering women, a horrifying incident in 2024, where obscene and vulgar images violating the personal liberty of respectable women went viral and were circulated via pen drive, shocked the public conscience and prompted the Karnataka government to form a special investigation team,” the court said.
{{/usCountry}}The court held that Revanna, known to the victim’s family, had grossly abused his position of power to repeatedly rape her, a pattern of assault that falls under Section 376(2)(n) of the Indian Penal Code. It found the survivor’s suffering to be extreme, marked by “severe physical and psychological trauma, social ostracism, and even a suicide attempt,” all of which, the court said, “warranted the maximum sentence.”
Quoting from the Raja Dharma, the court invoked the principle that “Dharma protects those who protect it; those who destroy Dharma get destroyed,” to emphasise the need for just and proportional punishment. It held that showing leniency to the accused would be inappropriate, as no mitigating factors were presented to justify anything less than the maximum sentence. The court concluded that the only fitting response to such a grave abuse of power and repeated sexual violence was the severest penalty permitted by law.
The court noted that the victim was a poor woman, employed as a domestic help by the Revannas at one of their residential properties. She earned just ₹10,000 per month and a sack of rice as salary for such work. Every time she deposed before the court, and each time she was asked to identify herself in the several videos of her sexual assault that were leaked online, the victim would begin to “weep profusely,” the court noted. It also referred to one of the videos where the woman is seen touching Revanna’s feet and reminding him that she was old enough to be his mother, urging him to spare her, and noted that Revanna showed no mercy.
All of this, the court held, unequivocally justified Prajwal Revanna’s conviction and the imposition of the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
“This Court is of the considered opinion that the convict deserves to be awarded the maximum punishment of life imprisonment under Section 376(2)(n) IPC, as there are no mitigating circumstances brought on record and the crime committed by the accused is of grave and heinous nature involving betrayal of trust, repeated sexual assault, and gross misuse of power,” the judge said.
Revanna was arrested in June last year from the Kempegowda airport in Bengaluru after he retired from Germany, where he had fled to after some of the videos of sexual assault in the present case began circulating online. Following the videos, the survivor had filed a police complaint accusing Revanna of having repeatedly sexually assaulted her. According to her testimony, the assaults occurred in 2021, during the Covid-19 lockdown, at two locations, the family’s farmhouse in Gannikada in Hassan district, and their residence in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru.
The survivor alleged that Revanna not only raped her on multiple occasions but also filmed the assaults on his mobile phone. She claimed she was threatened into silence.