Instead of raid, police could have called me: Agni Sridhar

Bengaluru: Reformed gangster and writer Agni Sridhar expressed his anger over media, especially TV channels, for projecting him in bad light in connection with the recent police raid on his residence.

Addressing a press conference at his residence in Kumaraswamy Layout on Sunday, he said, "I would not have felt bad if the media had called me a 'rowdy sheeter', as even today I am a rowdy sheeter, though I have not involved in any criminal activity for the last 15-20 years. But some channels sensationalised the entire episode and called me a rowdy in the guise of social activist. It has pained me a lot. I have been fighting for social causes from the last several years and I had thought media was supporting me all these years. But now I realised some TV channels are trying to suppress me," he alleged.

Further, he said that rowdies Onte Rohit and Silent Sunila were very well known to him and he won't deny it at all. "I have established 'Karunada Sene' organisation and both of them are office bearers. I know both of them have a bloody past, but I am trying to bring to the mainstream of the society and I am a fatherly figure for them. I am trying to change them for the last 3-4 years and even they have gone through a lot during this transition. I strongly believe that they have changed. If at all, they are involved in the threat call case or any other case, I would never see their faces again," he said.

He also expressed his displeasure over the way the police raided his house. "I was just a phone call away. The policemen would have just called me and asked me to produce Sunila and Rohit before them. I would have taken them to the police station. But without doing that, they got a search warrant from the court and raided the house with 150 policemen. What was the necessity? The police have the power to raid any house if they have credible information. I would have not even asked them to produce a search warrant, as I know the gravity of a shootout case."

Sridhar also clarified that the policemen did not behave rudely with him, as reported in a section of media, but in fact he himself who behaved erratically.
He, however, admitted that a police officer slapped him when he raised his voice.

"Some policeman assaulted my gunman for which I objected in a raised voice. This did not go well with another officer, who slapped me. I shouted at him, but senior officers asked me to keep calm. Later, the officer who slapped me also felt bad and apologized. It's not true that I collapsed after he slapped me. As police saw my health report during the search and as had high BP due to those developments, they took me to the hospital."