Hennur police file ‘B report’ in BJP worker’s death, clean chit to MLAs Ponnanna and Manthar Gowda

Nearly eight months after a BJP worker from Kodagu Vinay Somaiah ended his life in Bengaluru, blaming a local Congress worker and two Congress MLAs of Kodagu in his death note, the Bengaluru City Police have recently filed a ‘B report’ in the case giving a clean chit to MLA for Madikeri A.S. Ponnanna, MLA for Virajpet Manthar Gowda, and others.

The B report cites a lack of evidence to substantiate the allegations, as the grounds for the report.

Vinay Somaiah was found dead at the firm he was working at in Nagavara. In the death note, he alleged that he was booked in a politically motivated case and despite a stay on the FIR from the High Court, police continued to harass him and threatened to open a rowdy sheet against him at the insistence of MLAs Mr. Ponnanna and Mr. Gowda. He also named local Congress worker Thennira Myna, who was the complainant in the case. Vinay was the administrator of a WhatsApp group in which a member had posted an allegedly inflammatory post against Mr. Ponnanna.

In the B report filed before the jurisdictional court, the Hennur police said that despite forensic analysis of the phones of the accused and their call records, they did not find any evidence to substantiate the allegations that they called and threatened the deceased as alleged.

The police said they analysed the call records and the phones for two months preceding the death of Vinay Somaiah and found no calls, WhatsApp chats, or any form of communication that substantiated the allegations.