Cong suspends K’taka MLA over hotel brawl
BENGALURU: The Congress on Monday suspended a lawmaker in Karnataka after a fellow party legislator filed a police complaint accusing him of attempting to murder him a day earlier.
A committee comprising deputy chief minister G Parameshwara and ministers KJ George and Krishna Byregowda would probe the matter further, the party added.
Anand Singh filed the police complaint against J N Ganesh a day after he was admitted to a hospital in Bengaluru. Doctors treating Singh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he has suffered a black eye and nasal blood clots because of an assault.
Singh and Ganesh were staying at a resort along with other Congress lawmakers when they got into an argument. The lawmakers were shifted to the resort on Friday amid fears that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may try to poach them as part of attempts to topple the Congress government. The lawmakers were moved out of the resort on Monday.
In the First Information Report (FIR) filed in the case, Singh is quoted as saying Ganesh was angry with him for not having supported him during the 2018 assembly polls. “After dinner, when I was returning to my room with Ganesh, he began shouting at me, claiming that I had not supported him and that he would kill my nephew,” the FIR quotes Singh as saying.
“When I asked Ganesh not to do it, he… [said] it would be better to kill me then and there. He hit my head with a stick and some pots that were lying around and banged my head up against a wall,” Singh said. Singh said Ganesh allegedly called for a pistol to kill him.
Singh said Ganesh then allegedly pushed him and began kicking and punching him saying “die, die, die”. “If… minister E Tukaram, [lawmakers T] Raghumurthy, [S] Ramappa and Tanveer Sait had not restrained Ganesh, he would have killed me,” he said.
State Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao said action was taken against Ganesh in light of the serious charges and based on the reports of witnesses. “…we cannot let such incidents go unpunished.”