Prajwal Revanna’s sexual assaults will echo in rest of Lok Sabha polls: Shashi Tharoor

Prajwal is the grandson of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and nephew of former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy.

Faced with unrelenting attacks from the Congress and other political parties, the JD(S), an ally of the BJP, suspended Prajwal.

Also Read: ‘Prajwal Revanna raped 400 women,’ alleges Rahul Gandhi

‘They knew of the assaults’

When asked whether it would affect the BJP in the polls, Tharoor said, “The fact is that the gentleman is an ally of the BJP. The BJP has campaigned for him in the recently concluded elections. So, they would have a tough job explaining if they really had no idea, as it turns out that they did have an idea and that a BJP legislator had access to all these compromising videos, or incriminating videos, for some time before the elections.”

“Given these circumstances, I think the damage is to the BJP. Now the BJP is trying to turn the tables and say why hasn’t the Congress taken any action and why the Congress permitted him to leave. The Congress was unaware of this and was not given this information,” he said during an interaction with PTI editors at the agency’s headquarters in New Delhi.

Tharoor said the SIT was set up by the state government immediately and if Prajwal Rewanna had not made an exit in haste, he may well have been trapped with a lookout notice for him.

“Certainly in the remaining phases, this is going to echo, and it is not just in Karnataka, for example in next door Telangana, there is a roaring controversy and some women activists have come out strongly, saying ‘when will the patriarchy in this country wake up and realise how women are being abused and what have they done about it?’,” he questioned.

Also Read: Lookout notice issued against Prajwal Revanna in sexual assault case

‘Will definitely have impact’

“It is turning the expression of this feeling not just against all men in general but particularly those who are ruling the country today,” Tharoor said.

All of this is definitely going to have an impact, principally on the BJP, and second on systems that have empowered men like this to be predators as they have been, the Congress leader said.

The Congress has kept up the heat on its rival BJP over the matter.

Besides Rahul Gandhi, his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi has also hit out at the BJP on the sexual abuse allegations against Prajwal and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought votes for him and did not stop the JD(S) leader from leaving the country.

Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday had launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the sexual abuse allegations against Prajwal, asking whether being part of “Modi’s political family” is a “guarantee of protection for criminals”.

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