In a video released to the media on Saturday, former councillor V. Nagaraj, who is on the run, alleged that the police raided his house on April 14 to kill him in fake encounter. “The price on my head was ₹10 crore,” he alleged in the video.
He claimed that the police had brought an unlicensed gun with them. “They were planning to throw it at me when I open the door. After that, they would have shot at me claiming self-defence. This is an old tactic used by the police,” he said. “The fact that I was not at home saved my life.”
City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood told The Hindu that he did not want to comment on Mr. Nagaraj’s allegations, which he described as “comic”.
According to Mr. Nagaraj, the raid had been orchestrated to prevent him from contesting the Gandhi Nagar seat in the 2018 elections.
Denies kidnap allegations
A broker, who had been arrested in a currency exchange racket on April 2 in Benson Town, had approached the Hennur police a week after he got bail claiming that Mr. Nagaraj had kidnapped him. The broker, Umesh, claimed that Mr. Nagaraj released him only after he paid ₹50 lakh as ransom. Mr. Nagaraj, however, denied these claims. “I have never been to Hennur or nearby areas in recent times, but the police have registered a fake kidnap case against me. My house is in Srirampura, so the case should have been registered there,” he said.
He named Umesh and three other touts — Kishore, Madhu and Umesh’s brother Naveen — as part of the conspiracy to frame him.
Writes to HC Registrar
Mr. Nagaraj wrote to the High Court of Karnataka Registrar stating that a letter allegedly written by him on March 14 claiming to have bribed some judges was fake. “My signature was scanned, manipulated and then sent to your office,” he said in the second letter, reiterating that he had not bribed judges.
