Bengaluru: The Ballari violence on Jan 1, where BJP and Congress workers clashed over tying banners in front of Gangavati BJP MLA Gali Janardhan Reddy's house resulting in killing of a Congress worker is getting murkier with the BJP getting ready for a big showdown in Ballari on January 17.
While the BJP alleges that the government was trying to hush up the case and frame the BJP for the violence, the Congress is blaming BJP for the entire fiasco.
The problem for the Congress is that the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has distanced himself from the incident, while Deputy Chief Minister D K Shviakumar is trying hard to save his MLA Nara Bharath Reddy, whose private security personnel's bullet killed the Congress worker. Meanwhile, the state government has transferred Ballari IGP Vartika Katiyar for dereliction of duty and has made Kalburgi IGP in charge of Ballari in her place.
At the moment, the BJP is attacking the government on two points. First, though MLA's associate Sathish Reddy started the trouble in the evening, he sustained injuries in the clash and was shifted to hospital. However, the trouble started when MLA Bharath Reddy came to the spot and his security personnel started firing randomly. The bullet hit Rajashekhar, who was trying to escape police lathi charge.
When D K Shivakumar expressed his doubts that the bullet could have come from Janardhan Reddy's residence, Janardhan Reddy released a video showing Rajashekhar running to escape police lathi charge, when Bharth Reddy's security Gurupreeth Singh firing randomly standing on a road divider and Rajashekhar falling down after being hit by the bullet.
``They had come with a plan to kill someone and put the blame on me. However, multiple videos have exposed their gameplan and Bharath Reddy has to be arrested,'' Janardhan Reddy said.
Meanwhile, D K Shivakumar also locked horns with Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who alleged that two postmortem were conducted on Rajashekhar's body. While the doctors did not remove the bullet during the first postmortem, it was removed during the second postmortem.
D K Shivakumar denied that there were two postmortems and asked Kumaraswamy to show the proof for that. Kumaraswamy said that the first postmortem was conducted by Dr Yogish of BIMS and when he did not remove the bullet, the senior police officers called Dr Chethan and conducted the second postmortem. Since the police did not cooperate in burying the evidence, they were transferred, Kumaraswamy added.
Former Minister B Sriramulu also expressed his doubts that the government was trying to destroy all the evidence. ``In Rajashekhar's family customs, a dead body is buried. However, in this case, the body was burnt. We have information that more than one bullet had hit Rajashekhar and the government wanted to destroy all the future evidence,'' Sriramulu added.
Opposition leader R Ashok said that the government was exhibiting a dictatorial attitude in handling the Ballari violence issue and burying the truth. ``The BJP has taken it seriously and on Jan 17,our party is organising a massive rally in Ballari, urging for a CBI probe into the episode. We will not stop till the case is handed over to CBI, as we have lost all faith in the State government's investigating agencies,'' he added.
