Bengaluru: Senior BJP leader D.V. Sadananda Gowda, one of the former CMs of Karnataka, came out with a grave allegation in 2014. He blamed B.A. Basavaraj—then a Congress MLA with the Siddaramaiah government—for the rise in murders in Bengaluru’s KR Puram constituency.
Gowda publicly said at the time that Basavaraj was the “kingpin of the real estate mafia”.
On 5 March 2014, Karnataka’s senior BJP leadership, headed by Pralhad Joshi and including Gowda and the late Ananth Kumar, launched a protest before the KR Puram police station. They demanded Basavaraj’s arrest for allegedly masterminding the murder of city corporator Manjula Devi’s husband, N. Srinivas.
N. Srinivas was in his 40s when he was hacked to death by masked men in a salon in KR Puram (Krishnarajapuram) on 5 March.
Only years later, Gowda, in 2019, campaigned for Basavaraj’s by-election bid. By then, Basavaraj had defected to the BJP after leaving the Congress party.
Such has been the rise of Basavaraj—‘Byrathi Basavaraj’—in Bengaluru’s politics.
Starting as a taluk Panchayat board member in the early 90s, he first became a four-time MLA, and then, twice, a minister in the state.
Thursday’s arrest of the now 64-year-old Basavaraj by Karnataka Police Crime Investigation Department in the 2025 murder of a Bengaluru realtor has reignited scrutiny of the Krishnarajapuram BJP MLA’s controversial political ascent, long shadowed by alleged land mafia links, shifting political loyalties, and influence in regime changes.
Basavaraj now stands accused of being a conspirator in the 15 July 2025 murder of realtor V.G. Shivaprakash, alias “Biklu” Shiva (44).
The MLA was arrested after landing at the Bengaluru airport on an incoming flight from Ahmedabad Thursday, only hours after a division bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant rejected the arguments of the advocate representing him—Mukul Rohatgi—for his anticipatory bail.
The CJI asked MLA Basavaraj to surrender before the CID and then apply for regular bail.
On Friday, the CID produced Basaraj before a special sessions court for elected representatives in Bengaluru, where it is seeking the MLA’s custody.
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Real estate boom, crime & politics
A group of people murdered Shiva near his home in Bengaluru’s Halasuru at roughly 8 pm on the evening of 15 July 2025, on a public, busy street, in front of his mother. There is a purported recording of the brutal attack, showing helmet-borne assailants hacking the realtor to death.
The murder sent shockwaves across India’s IT capital, but it was not an unfamiliar story.
The bone of contention was a 1,300-square-foot plot, which one of Basavaraj’s close aides—Jagadish—allegedly wanted Shiva to hand over or part with. But he did not comply.
Jagadish is the main accused in Shiva’s murder. Basavaraj is named as A-5 (accused number 5) in the FIR.
Basavaraj had little to do with politics when A. Krishnappa, a veteran Congress leader and former minister, first took him under his wings. The young man, however, quickly seized every opportunity that came his way, going on to successfully contest the taluk Panchayat elections. In 2009, he became a Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) corporator from Hoody. Then, surprising everyone with his political acumen, he edged out his mentor’s candidature from KR Puram in 2008.
KR Puram lies largely outside the city’s core area. In the 2000s, KR Puram’s real estate value saw a boom, heralded by the information technology industry flourishing in and around it. The largely unnoticed land parcels overnight gained astronomical worth, propelling a rise in the profile of the locality.
Basavaraj’s rise coincided with, and allegedly was fuelled by, this transformation.
KR Puram was once known for public sector units and industrial training institutes. Following the establishment of the Information Technology Park Limited—a joint venture between the Government of Karnataka, a Singaporean consortium, and the Tata Group— near KR Puram on the Whitefield Road in 1994, the locality emerged as a major technology corridor.
Basavaraj profited from the transformation, those who have seen his rise have alleged.
Then in 2019, he allegedly played a key role in the political churning in Karnataka that critics have named ‘Operation Kamala’. It involved the mass resignation of 17 MLAs from the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government led by H.D. Kumaraswamy, ushering in a regime change.
Basavaraj purportedly helped in B.S. Yediyurappa’s comeback as the Karnataka CM in 2019. The four-time MLA, allegedly as a reward for his role, was bestowed the urban development portfolio in Yediyurappa’s Cabinet. He continued to hold the same portfolio under the next CM, Basavaraj Bommai.
In the case of Shiva’s murder, public prosecutors argued that giving Basavaraj anticipatory bail would create an opportunity for him to tamper with evidence and threaten witnesses.
The 2025 murder case
According to the FIR, Shiva bought a piece of land in 2023, built a small shed, and posted two women as the security guards. It has been alleged that on 11 May 2023, Jagadish and another person forcibly entered the property and assaulted and threw out the two women.
“He then called my son and told him that it was his locality and asked Shiva to execute a GPA (general power of attorney) in Jagadish’s name (related to the land), or part with his life,” according to Shiva’s mother’s police complaint.
But Shiva refused to budge despite calls and threats. In a police complaint, he stated that Jagadish, Kiran, and the local MLA, Basavaraj, were threatening him.
The mother said that on the night of the murder, Shiva was near his house, talking to his driver and an aide. A few minutes later, he had disappeared, and thereafter, his screams soon heard. Ten men, the mother recounted in her complaint, were hacking her son with machetes before they fled on their bikes and a White Scorpio.
Immediately after, Jagadish reportedly fled the country, travelling to the UAE, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, among other countries. He then travelled to Thailand but was denied entry based on an Interpol lookout notice against him, forcing him to return to Sri Lanka.
Shortly after, the case was handed over to the Karnataka Police CID, which started making arrests. With an Interpol ‘Blue Corner’ notice reportedly issued against him at the insistence of the CID, Jagadish was eventually arrested on his return to Delhi in August 2025.
Though Basavaraj has claimed that he did not know Jagadish, the prosecution and the police have countered this argument in court.
The CJI read out the charges against Basavaraj to counter Advocate Rohatgi’s claims that the MLA did not even know the main accused. “Accused goes to a site where two groups want to get the property…he (deceased) is gunned down in front of his mother. Now, the call record shows you (Basavaraj) are in touch with Jagdish, who used the gun and then fled to Sri Lanka,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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