Santro Ravi, the man at centre of political storm in Bengaluru, arrested from Gujarat

While the Opposition had sought to put the government on the mat over its alleged links with Ravi, pointing to his photographs with BJP ministers in the state, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has denied any association.

“He has been arrested in Ahmedabad. The Mysore city police have arrested him with the assistance of the Gujarat Police. A case was registered on January 2 by the Vijaynagar police in Mysore against him,” Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Alok Kumar said on Friday evening.

The son of an excise department official from Kesturu village in Mandya district, Ravi found himself on the wrong side of law early on – in 1988, he was arrested for allegedly kidnapping a minor, a distant relative of an IPS officer, and marrying her in Dharmasthala. However, he escaped from a hospital where he was admitted after he complained of sickness.

Ravi was also allegedly involved in vehicle thefts in and around Mysuru.

Born K S Manjunath, he went by several names but the name ‘Santro Ravi’ stuck, reportedly because during his early years as an alleged outlaw in Mysuru, he drove a Hyundai Santro and police kept an eye on Santro cars to track Ravi’s movements.

Police sources said that from vehicle thefts, Ravi soon graduated to bigger crimes, allegedly getting involved in trafficking of women — as many as 14 such cases have been registered against him since 1995. According to police sources, he was convicted in one case where he served a seven-month prison term.

While Ravi stayed on the radar of the police, he largely evaded arrest, allegedly because of his connections in high places. As he stayed away from court hearings, the Karnataka High Court declared him a proclaimed offender.

By the time he was finally arrested in 2005, at the end of a hot pursuit by the police in Mysuru, Ravi’s name had become synonymous with trafficking in the region. He later got out on bail.

Ravi soon shifted his base to Bengaluru – a move that allegedly brought him closer to those in power and, as a police officer who has watched his rise closely said, brought about a change in the way he carried himself.

“By 2010, Ravi had started wearing white shirts and portrayed himself as a powerful person who did social work, who had contacts with ministers and top government officials,” the officer said.

Ravi allegedly claimed high connections and approached policemen with offers of facilitating their transfer to good postings on payment of funds to political leaders. “He approached police officers claiming to be close to the CM. He sent lists of police transfers and claimed to have facilitated those. He also brought along women to meetings and claimed that they were supplied to political leaders,” said a police officer familiar with Ravi’s modus operandi.

Police sources said Ravi also sent purported screenshots of WhatsApp call records with ministers and police officials to promote himself as a person with high connections.

What has now landed Ravi in a spot is a case of caste atrocities and assault filed by a woman claiming to be his estranged wife. The 27-year-old woman alleged that Ravi used his connections in the police department to allegedly frame her and her sister in a dacoity case registered in Bengaluru two months ago after she broke off her relationship with him.

With an internal probe by the Bengaluru Police now suggesting that the dacoity case may have been false, the Karnataka BJP finds itself in a spot given the Opposition’s allegations of state ministers hobnobbing with Santro Ravi. Earlier this week, Inspector K Y Praveen of the Cottonpet police station, who allegedly filed the false case against the woman, was suspended.