Bengaluru riots: Former Mayor Sampath Raj sent to 14 days judicial custody

Former Mayor Sampath Raj has been sent to 14 days judicial custody in Bengaluru riots case. He was arrested earlier this week.

Last week, Congress leader Sampath Raj was arrested by the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch police after he was absconding for nearly a month. The former Mayor of Bengaluru is believed to be one of the key conspirators to have instigated Bengaluru riots in August this year.

Sampath Raj went missing from a hospital under the police's watch and had been absconding since October 30. He had escaped from a private hospital where he was admitted for the treatment of Covid-19.

Raj had field anticipatory bail application during his treatment which was rejected by court. Police had also arrested one of Raj's associates named Riyazuddin on November 16 and another Congress corporator named Abdul Rakeeb Zakir (who is yet to be traced and arrested) for helping him escape.

Raj's personal assistant (PA), Arun Kumar was the first one to be picked by the CCB within a week of the riots that took place around August 20 based on his telephone records.

Bengaluru riots

It all began with an insidious Facebook post by one Naveen Kumar a nephew of Congress MLA R. Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy on August 11 led to violent protests by an enraged mob. The riots unleashed by a violent mob left four people killed in a police firing and as many as 60 police personnel were injured. Two police stations and the house of Congress MLA Murthy were torched down.

The Bengaluru police had registered more than 60 FIRs in this case alone and subsequently followed it up with filing a whopping 850-page preliminary charge sheet in October this year in connection with the riots. In the charge sheet, the CCB named 52 persons as accused and recorded the statements of over 30 eyewitnesses.

Besides the CCB, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) too is investigating into this riots case parallelly and so far this agency has arrested as many as 293 persons in connections with the riots. Of this 293, 124 arrests were made in relation to the riots in D.J. Halli Police Station case and the rest 169 arrests were in relation to the riots in K.G. Halli Police Station case.