The man at the centre of one of the biggest political scandals in Karnataka politics in recent times, Prajwal Revanna, the grandson of Janata Dal (Secular) founder H D Deve Gowda, was on Friday found guilty by a Bengaluru court of raping a former domestic worker at a farmhouse owned by his family
Prajwal is accused in four rape cases that emerged after multiple videos of his alleged sexual assaults surfaced in the public domain ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Prajwal’s conviction has come at the end of a trial that began on May 2 with the recording of the rape survivor’s statement. The chargesheet in the case was filed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police in December 2024, and the charges were framed on April 3, 2025.
A former Lok Sabha MP from JD(S) bastion Hassan, 34-year-old Prajwal’s conviction is likely to box the JD(S), a BJP ally since the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, into a corner.
Prajwal has never been known to mind his words — or his party JD(S). While rebelliousness and outspokenness can be the undoing of a politician, Prajwal picked up enough tricks of the trade. In that, he was said to have had the guiding hand of his mother Bhavani Revanna, who comes from a political family of Krishnarajanagar and is, by all accounts, the main driving force behind the ambitions of this side of the Deve Gowda family.
An engineering graduate, Prajwal, the son of Deve Gowda’s elder son H D Revanna, studied MTech in Australia. However, just before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he came home and plunged straight into politics. Just 24 at the time, he was soon a prominent presence by Deve Gowda’s side in the old Mysuru region, which is a JD(S) bastion, mingling easily with people.
The competing branch of the family tree, led by H D Revanna’s younger brother and former CM H D Kumaraswamy, didn’t miss the signs. And a rivalry was born, one that has continued to dog the JD(S).
In fact, no sooner had the damaging allegations against Prajwal broke than Kumaraswamy distanced himself from them, saying that his father Deve Gowda and he “have always respected women”.
In May 2024, the JD(S) led by Kumaraswamy announced the suspension of Prajwal till an SIT set up by the state Congress government submitted its report.
Bhavani herself was at one point keen on a ticket and made several attempts 2013 onwards for the Krishnarajanagar seat. However, Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy were said to have blocked it.
But it was the denial of a ticket to Prajwal in the 2018 Assembly elections that took the infighting within the family to another level. Prajwal at the time promised to abide by the party’s decision, but lashed out later, saying: “The party is promoting suitcase (or money) culture.”
Then came 2019. After Nikhil Kumaraswamy got the Lok Sabha ticket from Mandya, a family pocket borough, pressure bore down on Deve Gowda to accommodate Prajwal too.
Finally, torn between the demands by his sons’ families, Deve Gowda gave up his own stronghold of Hassan for Prajwal.
While announcing Prajwal as the Hassan candidate, Deve Gowda, in tears like his grandson, made an emotional declaration that Hassan would elect the youngster. “And if Deve Gowda says it, more than half the voters in Hassan abide,” a JD(S) worker says.
And they did, handing the debutant Prajwal 53% of the votes, in the election where the JD(S) and Congress were allies, surpassing even the votes for Deve Gowda in 2014.
Meanwhile, the veteran leader and former prime minister himself lost from the Tumakuru Lok Sabha seat, to the BJP’s G S Basavaraj, while Nikhil was defeated in Mandya.
In the fight for supremacy between the Revanna and Kumaraswamy sides, that defeat stung – and there were allegations of the other side being involved in Nikhil losing.
In his one and only term as an MP, Prajwal did not male much of an impact in the House and remaining inaccessible to people of the constituency.
Even before the announcement of the BJP and JD(S) alliance last year, Deve Gowda had declared Prajwal as the candidate from Hassan. Neither the BJP nor Kumaraswamy was apparently too happy. At the time, state BJP president B Y Vijayendra had said, “It is unfair to say that the BJP high command was aware of it. If we were aware, where is the question of allowing him (Prajwal) to contest (as the alliance’s joint candidate from Hassan). JD(S) has already initiated action by suspending him.”