Former Janata Dal (Secular) leader and ex-MP from Hassan, Prajwal Revanna, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with a rape case, has now approached the Karnataka High Court to challenge the judgment delivered by the lower court. Through his appeal, he has requested the High Court to overturn his conviction, arguing that the case against him is filled with inconsistencies, procedural lapses, and questionable evidence. His petition primarily focuses on the delay in filing the complaint, missing pieces of crucial evidence, and contradictions present in the forensic findings, which, according to him, make the conviction unsustainable.
In his submission, Revanna questioned the foundation of the prosecution’s case by drawing attention to what he described as significant lapses in the investigation. He pointed out that the First Information Report alleged that the survivor had been exploited for political purposes, yet records show that the same woman attended a housewarming event at a farmhouse in 2023, nearly three years after the alleged assault took place. According to him, such behavior undermines the credibility of the accusations and raises doubts about the timeline of events presented by the prosecution.
The petition further underlined the fact that the police registered the complaint only after a three-year gap, which Revanna claimed weakened the reliability of the allegations. His legal team also highlighted that the survivor failed to identify clothes and a bag that were reportedly recovered from a store room, thereby questioning the authenticity and relevance of such evidence. Moreover, the appeal argued that the mobile phone, which allegedly contained a recording of the assault, was never seized during the investigation, thus leaving a crucial piece of evidence outside judicial scrutiny.
Another major contention raised in the plea was regarding the forensic report, which Revanna’s counsel argued contained contradictions. The report claimed that semen-stained clothes were recovered from a locked room, yet the circumstances surrounding the recovery and the subsequent analysis, according to the defense, were unreliable and inconsistent. These contradictions, he claimed, further weaken the prosecution’s version of the incident and create serious doubts about the evidentiary value relied upon in the conviction.
Revanna’s petition, therefore, urged the High Court to take into account all these factors and set aside the life sentence imposed on him. It also stressed that the lower court’s ruling was based on questionable grounds and required reconsideration in the interest of justice. Earlier, on August 2, the trial court had sentenced him to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹11 lakh after finding him guilty of raping a 47-year-old domestic worker in Mysuru and recording the assault. The fine, as directed by the court, was to be handed over to the survivor as compensation.
