Karnataka Lokayukta Justice V Bhaskar Rao's son Ashwin Rao was arrested following allegations of a multi-crore extortion racket made against him by a state government employee a few months ago, local media reported on Monday.
The Deccan Herald reported that Ashwin Rao was arrested from Maharashtra on Sunday by the Karnataka government's Special Investigation Team (SIT) for allegedly demanding a Rs 1 crore bribe from an executive engineer.
The complainant -- MN Krishnamurthy, who works with the Karnataka public works department -- had in May alleged that the Lokayukta's son had asked for a bribe.
Following this, the state government set up an SIT in June to probe the charges.
Ashwin's arrest comes within hours of the arrest of senior Lokayukta official Syed Riyaz.
Lokayukta's joint commissioner and PRO Riyaz was arrested on 26 July from a hospital in Bengaluru. The Indian Express reported that Riyaz had tried to evade his arrest by claiming that he had some health issues for which he was undergoing treatment at the city hospital.
The SIT team then took him to a government hospital, where the doctors declared him fit.
Riyaz has served in the office of Lokayukta for over a decade and reportedly knew a lot about the organisation. A report in the Hindustan Times claimed that the extortion racket run by Ashwin and Riyaz, among others, forced at least 100 government officials to pay nearly Rs 200 crore in bribe to fend off investigation.
According to a Deccan Herald report, the police had last week arrested three more persons allegedly involved in the extortion racket -- Kannada TV journalist Srinivasa Gowda, Right to Information (RTI) activist Shanakare Gowda and realtor Ashok Kumar.
