M K Ganapathi M K Ganapathi

A police officer, who has been under the scanner for alleged involvement in cases of corruption and a fake encounter, committed suicide in a lodge at Madikeri town of Karnataka’s Kodagu district Thursday evening.

A few hours before his death, Deputy Superintendent of Police M K Ganapathi had addressed a section of the media in Madikeri and accused two senior police officers in the state of hounding him through the Lokayukta Police and the State Human Rights Commission.

This is the second police officer of Deputy SP rank to commit suicide in Karnataka in the last seven days. On July 5, Deputy SP Kallapa Handibag, working in the Chikmagalur region, who was accused of collecting a ransom of Rs 10 lakh in a kidnapping case, committed suicide at his home in Belgaum. Handibag was alleged to be working at the behest of a local VHP leader.

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Ganapathi had worked for several years in Bengaluru as a police inspector and assistant commissioner of police. He was recently transferred to Mangaluru as Inspector General of Police of the Western Range.

The Deputy SP travelled to his home district of Kodagu on Thursday and rented a room in Vinayaka Lodge in Madikeri. He left the room for a while in his police uniform to address the media. Shortly after he returned to the lodge, he was found dead by the staff.

During his press conference, Ganapathi had said that if anything were to happen to him, the blame would rest on two police officers — Pranab Mohanty, an IGP in the Lokayukta police, and A M Prasad, the state intelligence chief. He also said that former home minister K J George would have to be held responsible. “They are constantly sending people from the Lokayukta and from human rights commission to inquire about me. I have been subjected to torture,” he had said.

When he was a police inspector in Bengaluru in 2010, Ganapathi was accused of shooting a 21-year-old, Prashanth, allegedly involved in rowdy activities, a few days after the youth got into a bar brawl. The matter was taken to the State Human Rights Commission and the then BJP Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda by the youth’s mother Umadevi.

In 2014 a businessman, Rangaswamy, had alleged that Rs 1 crore was stolen from his locker. Ganapathi, who was the investigating officer in the case, however mentioned in the FIR that only Rs 24,000 was stolen. Ganapathi stated that a relative of the businessman had stolen the money and allegedly returned only a small part of it to Rangaswamy. Ganapathi was then suspended.

Following the news of Ganapathi’s death, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Jagadish Shettar demanded immediate resignation of K J George, who currently holds the Bengaluru development portfolio in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government. “We will raise the issue in the Assembly on Monday and the government will have to answer for the situation in the police department. We demand the resignation of K J George,’’ Shettar said.

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