Karnataka Lokayukta corruption case: SIT grills trio for five hours

BENGALURU: SIT officials investigating the corruption within the Lokayukta grilled all the three accused, Ashok Kumar, Srinivas Gowda and Shankare Gowda, for nearly five hours on Thursday. The accused were grilled at the SIT office located on the CID premises.

SIT head ADGP Kamal Pant, DIG Soumendu Mukherjee, DCP Labhu Ram and other officials interrogated the trio from 10.30 am to 3.30 pm. Later, they were taken to Bowring Hospital for a medical check up.

“All the three were questioned about their individual roles. It is learnt that each team member was given one responsibility. We are suspecting each member have made more than a crore each through extortion. One of them was getting information about the officials, while the second one was contacting them and the third person worked as a planner. They had distributed the work among themselves,” a source said.

It is learnt that the SIT officials have issued notice to a person who was working in the same organisation where accused Srinivas Gowda worked. However, no official sources confirmed it.

Meanwhile, there were rumours about the arrest of the other accused, Hotte Krishna, but Labhu Ram confirmed that only three have been arrested so far and no one was picked up on Thursday. Further, it is said that a police team has been sent to nab the prime accused and Lokayukta’s son Ashwin Y.