Bengaluru: A special court has rejected a closure report filed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in a rape case against Suraj Revanna, grandson of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda. This is the second of two rape cases filed against Suraj.
In the first case, Suraj Revanna is accused of raping a party worker, in which the SIT has filed a chargesheet. In the second case, the SIT submitted a closure report, which has now been rejected by the court.
Earlier this year, on April 3, a special court in Bengaluru dismissed former Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna's application seeking discharge in a sexual assault case, stating that there was sufficient material to frame charges. Prajwal Revanna, also a grandson of former PM HD Deve Gowda, faces sexual assault allegations from five women, and the Karnataka police have filed three chargesheets against him. The current case pertained to the alleged rape of a domestic worker at his Gannikada farmhouse in Hassan district and at his residence in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru, during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021.
Judge Santosh Gajanan Bhat, presiding over the special court for criminal cases against sitting and former MPs and MLAs, stated that the materials on record were adequate to proceed to the next stage of trial. The court rejected Revanna's argument that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) lacked the authority to file the chargesheet, deeming such procedural objections irrelevant at that point. The court clarified that its immediate task was to examine whether the available materials warranted framing charges, not to assess the case's merits.
Regarding the defense's claim that the victim's employment at the farmhouse undermined her credibility, Judge Bhat noted that this alone does not automatically invalidate her testimony. He emphasized that the court is only expected to evaluate the threshold of suspicion required to move the case forward to trial and that a woman's statement about her chastity must ordinarily be accepted unless there is clear evidence of coercion, irregularity, or fabrication.
In related news, in November 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed a bail plea of former JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna, who faces charges of rape and sexual assault. A bench of Justices Dela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma rejected the plea, observing that Revanna is a very influential person. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Revanna, argued that a charge sheet had been filed and that section 376 of the IPC (rape) was not in the initial complaint. The bench declined to interfere with the Karnataka High Court's previous decision to deny him bail.
Furthermore, in August 2025, a special court for elected representatives in Bengaluru convicted former JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna, also a grandson of HD Deve Gowda, in a rape and sexual harassment case. Judge Gajanana Bhat delivered the verdict, with sentencing scheduled for a later date. Revanna had been under investigation by a special investigation team following allegations of sexually assaulting a domestic help.
