Bengaluru : Ashwin Rao, the son of Karnataka Lokayukta Justice V Bhaskar Rao, was arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Monday from his hideout in Maharashtra for allegedly seeking a Rs 1-crore bribe from an executive engineer in Karnataka.
Rao, based out of Hyderabad, was on the run ever since his name figured as a kingpin in the running of an extortion racket from the Lokayukta office in Bengaluru.
Earlier, an SIT team arrested Lokayukta’s joint commissioner, Syed Riyaz. He was also on the run and was found holed up in a private hospital.
The arrest of Rao was made by Superintendent of Police Laburam at Aurangabad. The SIT will be bringing him here for interrogation after obtaining a transit remand.
In the FIR filed by Lokayukta’s Superintendent of Police, Sonia Narang, Ashwin and Riyaz have been named as the prime suspects. Three other accomplices — Ashok Kumar, a realtor, Shanakare Gowda, an RTI activist, and Srinivasa Gowda, a TV journalist with a Kannada news channel here — were arrested earlier.
It may be recalled that state Public Works Department executive engineer M.N. Krishnamurthy, in a complaint to Narang on May 11, had alleged that Ashwin Rao had sought the Rs 1-crore bribe from him through Riyaz and Kumar by threatening to book a graft case against him and raid his premises if he did not pay up the ransom.
