Moments after walking out on bail, Munirathna arrested in rape case

BJP leader Munirathna. File
| Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar

R. R. Nagar BJP MLA Munirathna, who was released from Parappana Agrahara Central Prison on Friday (September 20, 2024) morning, was arrested by Ramanagara district police in a rape case moments later.

Kaggalipura Police were waiting outside the prison complex for Munirathna to walk out from Thursday night. As soon as Munirathna’s lawyers presented the bail order issued by the court on Thursday evening and completed the procedures, Kaggalipura Police arrested him. 

Munirathna was arrested from Kolar district on September 14 for allegedly threatening a civic contractor and demanding a bribe from him. The Special Court of Magistrate for criminal cases against former and present MPs and MLAs granted him bail in the case on Thursday. The court also granted him anticipatory bail in a case where he was booked under Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 for casteist slurs against a SC community, while talking to the contractor.

In the Kaggalipura case that he has now been arrested in, Munirathna has been booked for rape for allegedly recording private videos to honey-trap and blackmail a 40-year-old social worker for many years.

In the complaint, the victim has alleged that Munirathna raped her multiple times between 2020 and 2022 and threatened and blackmailed her to honey-trap others.

According to the FIR, Munirathna allegedly asked the victim to strip on a video call, but the latter refused to do it. A few days later, he called the victim to his godown at Muthyalanagar, where he allegedly raped her and recorded his act. Threatening her with the video, he allegedly coaxed the victim into helping him honey-trap the husband of a former councillor. She also claimed that Munirathna claimed that the woman he had sent to honeytrap the man was an AIDS patient and sought her help to honey trap the councillor’s son as well, to which she refused and went incommunicado later.

Further, the victim alleged that Munirathna threatened her into making explicit videos of a politician from a rival party and blackmailed him during elections. The victim also alleged that the MLA made similar honey trap videos of various police officers and blackmailed them.