K'taka officer pays with life for exposing land scam

Abhirr V P CNN-IBN | 20-May 21:12 PM

Bangalore: Days after being brutally attacked, senior Karnataka Administrative Officer SP Mahantesh succumbed to brain injuries at a private hospital in Bangalore on Sunday. Mahantesh who was on life support for the past two days was attacked by unidentified people in the heart of the city on Tuesday night.

The KAS officer was working as the deputy director of the audit wing at the state's cooperative department, which was investigating irregularities of land allotment by several cooperative societies. The Bangalore Police have set up a special team to track down the culprits but have not got any leads so far.

"We are looking into his job chart, we are looking into all other things whether it was professional or personal," Bangalore Central DCP BR Ravikanthe Gowda said.

This is the second attack on a state government official over the past two weeks. On May 6 an assistant conservator of forest, Madan Naik was attacked by tourists while doing his duty. Naik too succumbed to his injuries. In both cases the accused have not been arrested yet. The state government, battling for its own survival, claims that such incidents will be prevented from now on.

Karnataka Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda said, "We have sent in a team to investigate the matter and its a call for us that in future at least we should be very careful as far as the officers are concerned."

"I am really shocked because the first priority of the government must be to protect honest officers because unless honest officers have confidence in the government and in the police system in being able to execute their work properly we will not get justice," Chairman Emiritus, Infosys, Narayana Murthy said.

Mahantesh's death has also thrown up a larger question - whether government officials in the line of duty are safe in Karnataka and whether the state government can prevent such attacks in future.

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