BANGALORE: The small jasmine garland presented by a freedom fighter to Lokayukta N. Venkatachala said it all.

The man, K. Narayanappa, folded his trembling hands, to congratulate Mr. Venkatachala for exposing corruption in the police force.

"Something like this was needed for a long time now," said Mr. Narayanappa, who had come all the way from Doddaballapur to felicitate the Lokayukta.

He slowly walked away saying: "I feel happy that you have taken the initiative to cleanse the department." Mr. Venkatachala accepted all this with folded hands and told him that his action was reassuring for him.

Amidst receiving innumerable calls congratulating him and people personally visiting him to thank him, Mr. Venkatachala told The Hindu that he had "a sense of satisfaction. I wanted to do this for long."

In one hour's time that this correspondent was with him, the Lokayukta received over 10 calls appreciating his work.

He said he had been planning this for some time now. He had been getting many complaints from people about the police. "But the police department is sensitive and I had to do a lot of preparation."

He said he had asked his officials — two superintendents of police in particular — to keep a vigil on a set of policemen against whom complaints were many. They were able to build records against the officials through discreet enquiries. Only on the eve of the raid, three other Superintendents of Police (called specially from other districts) were informed about it and the raid was conducted. All precautions were taken to ensure secrecy.

Although in one case, the search party found little, "it was not a problem." The information was not leaked. The Lokayukta hopes to secure the required proof and evidence against all the accused officials.

The task was difficult because he had to inspire his team a lot. Many of them had worked with the accused or were superiors to them.

Some of those in the search party were even batch mates of the accused. "I have to get the work done against the system using the system," he said.

When asked why he had resorted to such a major raid towards the fag end of his term as Lokayukta, Mr. Venkatachala said he had taken time to build records against the corrupt and powerful. They had political backing, he said. "This action by the Lokayukta police is to caution other officials," he said.

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