Murder case against BJP MLA: Why Karnataka’s stringent law against organised crime is under spotlight again

Following the December 19 order of the HC, the Karnataka police have obtained a clearance from the state government to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the HC order, which has the effect of removing the KCOCA charges against Basavaraj and all other 19 accused persons in the Bikla Shiva murder case as well.

What is the KCOCA?

The involvement of organised criminal gangs in terrorist activities in the state of Maharashtra resulted in the legislation of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999, by the BJP-Shiv Sena government, which was in power in the state at the time.

The law was adopted almost in its entirety in Karnataka and was legislated during the tenure of a Congress government in 2001 and received presidential assent in December 2001. Incidentally, the MCOCA law was made applicable to the Delhi region in 2002.

Clauses under KCOCA allow police to hold arrested persons in custody for 30 days and in judicial custody for up to 180 days before filing a chargesheet unlike conventional crimes, where police custody is for 15 days and 90 days is the maximum limit a person can be held in judicial custody without filing a chargesheet.

On conviction in an organised crime case, the KCOCA prescribes life imprisonment or death for the main actors in a crime involving murder and up to five years for abettors in the form of conspirators, persons providing shelter and logistics.

In KCOCA cases, bail can be rejected based on prima facie evidence of involvement of a suspect in a crime and statements of confession made before a police officer can be treated as evidence and legal telephone interceptions are given credence.

“The existing penal laws and the adjudicatory system, are not adequate to curb or control the menace of organised crime. Therefore, it is considered necessary to enact a law to control the menace of organised crimes in the State,” says the preface to the KCOCA law.

“The illegal wealth generated by organised crime is so huge that after a stage, its perpetrators are trying to interfere with the vital institutions of the state by their money power or through threat or intimidation. In fact, many criminal activities tend to put a question mark on the very existence of the State. The experience in our country as well as in other countries of the world shows that organised criminal syndicates make common cause with terrorist gangs and foster narcoterrorism,” the law states.

What did the Karnataka HC rule?

A single judge Bench of the Karnataka HC ruled on December 19 that the state police had ordered invocation of the KCOCA law on August 12, 2025, against the BJP MLA, and 19 others, in the murder case of a real estate operator V G Shivaprakash alias Bikla Shiva, 44, without evidence of the involvement of at least one of the accused in “continuing unlawful activity”.

Under the KCOCA, “continuing unlawful activity” means involvement of at least one person named in a gang crime in more than one serious crime in the last 10 years, where the punishment is a prison term of over three years, and where the courts have taken cognizance of the chargesheet in the case. This is a prerequisite to invoking KCOCA charges in any case.

In the Bikla Shiva murder case, where the BJP MLA is accused number five, the Karnataka HC has quashed an August 12 order of the state police to invoke KCOCA on the grounds that no person who is accused of direct involvement in the murder case has more than one charge sheet against them for a serious crime punishable with a prison term of over three years.

“A holistic reading of Section 2(1)(d) and 2(1)(e) of KCOCA would indicate that as regards a member of the organised crime syndicate, there must be involvement of such member individually or jointly in cognizable offence punishable with imprisonment of three years or more with respect to at least more than one charge sheet having been filed in that regard before a competent Court,” the HC observed.

“This aspect having been overlooked by the approval authority would reflect non-application of mind,” the HC said.

The HC order came despite one of the key accused in the murder case, Madan R, being involved in two attempt to murder cases from 2021 and 2022, where courts have taken cognizance of charge sheets filed under section 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code, which is punishable with a jail term of up to 10 years.

Note that in September, a special court for elected representatives upheld the invocation of KCOCA in the Bikla Shiva murder case by pointing to the multiple chargesheets against Madan for serious crimes, as well as the joint involvement of Vimal Raj and Madan in two serious crimes in the last 10 years.

How often has the KCOCA been used in Karnataka?

Initially, the KCOCA was very sparingly used since the setting up of special courts to carry out trials of cases booked under the law was delayed. The Congress government, which introduced the law in Karnataka, was also reluctant to use it in the early part of the 2000s on account of the existence of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) 2002 – that was repealed by the UPA in 2004.

In 2009, the BJP government in the state had proposed strengthening the provisions of KCOCA with detentions of up to a year without chargesheets but the proposal was not implemented.

The law was used for the first time by the Karnataka police against a gang linked to the former Morocco-based underworld don Bannanje Raja, who were arrested for the December 2013 daylight shooting of a trader, R N Nayak, in Ankola in coastal Karnataka. The gang had earlier attempted to extort the trader.

Although there were no chargesheets against the gangster Bannanje Raja himself when he was deported from Morocco in 2015, the Karnataka police invoked KCOCA against Raja on account of many others arrested for the Ankola shooting having multiple chargesheets against them for serious crimes.

Bannanje Raja, alias Rajendra Kumar, and eight of his associates were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder under the Indian Penal Code and organised crime activities under the KCOCA on April 4, 2022, by a sessions court for the 2013 R N Nayak murder case.

There are as many as 30 KCOCA cases pending in the state against organised criminal gangs at present, with the most high-profile one being the September 5, 2017, murder of the journalist Gauri Lankesh at her home by an organised, right-wing Hindutva crime syndicate.

What legal challenges has the implementation of KCOCA faced in the past?

One of the most serious challenges to the usage of KCOCA by the Karnataka police came up in 2021, in the case of the murder of Lankesh.

On April 22, 2021, a single judge Bench of the Karnataka HC ordered the dropping of charges under the KCOCA against Mohan Nayak, an alternative medicine practitioner from Dakshina Kannada, who allegedly provided logistics for the murder of the journalist. The court did so on the grounds that the law was not applicable to Nayak since he had no prior criminal record.

The HC rejected the plea of the Karnataka police that the KCOCA law is applicable to all persons accused in an organised crime if any one person arrested in the case has more than one charge sheet for violent crimes against them in the preceding 10 years.

The Karnataka HC order was overturned by a three judge Bench of the Supreme Court in a landmark order on October 21, 2021, where it ruled that the Karnataka HC had erred in quashing the KCOCA charges against Nayak on the grounds that he had no prior crimes against him of a serious nature.

The SC said that “if the role of the offender is merely that of a facilitator or of an abettor as referred to in Section 3(2), 3(3), 3(4) or 3(5), the requirement of named person being involved in more than two chargesheets registered against him in the past is not relevant.”

The SC also said KCOCA charges are with respect to a crime and not individuals accused in a crime, despite the mandatory requirement of evidence of “continuing criminal activity” in the form prior chargesheets for serious crimes against the key accused for invoking KCOCA.

“The competent authority has to focus essentially on the factum whether the information/material reveals the commission of a crime which is an organized crime committed by the organized crime syndicate. In that, the prior approval is ‘qua offence’ and not the offender as such,” the SC ruled in the Lankesh case on an appeal by her sister.

“Be it noted that requirement of more than two chargesheets is in reference to the continuing unlawful activities of the organised crime syndicate and not qua individual member thereof,” the SC said in its 2021 order.