Ex-Karnataka MP Prajwal Revanna had 2,000 explicit photos, 40-50 videos of women on his phone, former driver tells court

Karthik, who was initially accused of leaking the videos of Prajwal’s alleged sexual assaults on women, told a special court on Monday that he came across the pictures and videos of the alleged assaults when he secretly looked at Prajwal’s mobile phone in Bengaluru in 2019 when the then MP left his phone in his car while visiting his girlfriend.t

A close confidante of the then Hassan MP till 2022, Karthik told the court that he browsed the phone out of curiosity since Prajwal often viewed his phone in a secretive manner.

“When I opened the mobile phone, I found videos which consisted of having sexual intercourse by the accused. The videographs and photos pertained to the JDS party workers, maid servants, etc. The mobile phone consisted of more than 2,000 photographs of women and about 40-50 videos. The videos consisted of nearly 30-40 women,” he told the court.

The driver said that he downloaded the pictures and videos to his phone and later showed them to Prajwal’s mother, Bhavani Revanna, the wife of JD(S) MLA H D Revanna, in an alleged effort to inform them about Prajwal’s activities.

Karthik said that he lost the mobile phone into which he had transferred the videos and pictures–for which he filed a police complaint–but there was a backup of the material since it was transferred to an old phone given to him by Prajwal.

In 2022, Karthik said he had a falling out with Prajwal and his family, resulting in cases and counter-cases being filed against each other. In 2023, Prajwal obtained a court order against the release of his private videos and pictures by Karthik to the media.

According to Karthik, a pen drive of the videos and pictures was given to his lawyer, G Devaraje Gowda, a BJP leader who had contested Assembly elections against H D Revanna in the Hassan region.

Karthik stated in the court that the videos and pictures of Prajwal, which emerged through pen drives distributed in the Hassan constituency ahead of the April 26, 2024, Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, were the same ones he had handed to Gowda in a pen drive.

Karthik appeared in court as prosecution witness number 10 in the trial of the first of four cases of rape and sexual harassment registered by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police after the explicit videos and pictures of the alleged sexual assaults by Prajwal emerged in the public domain in April 2024.

The trial in the first case began on May 2 with a former domestic worker at the farmhouse of the Revanna family telling the court of Prajwal’s alleged assaults on her. The statement of the victim was recorded during in-camera proceedings in the special court.

The case was registered on the basis of a complaint filed by a woman on May 8, 2024. The woman was rescued on May 5 from a farmhouse near Mysuru, where she was allegedly kept in confinement after being identified in videos of sexual assaults recorded by Prajwal on his mobile phone.

The trial in a second case where Prajwal is accused of repeatedly assaulting a former JD(S) zilla panchayat worker with threats and coercion is scheduled to begin on May 28.

The former MP is also named as an accused in a case of sexual assault on a cook who worked for the Revanna family and the alleged sexual harassment of the cook’s daughter.

A chargesheet running into 1,632 pages and backed by 113 witnesses was filed in the first case in December 2024 by the SIT constituted to investigate the cases against Prajwal.