Rs 40 lakh changed hands to oust DySP Anupama Shenoy?

Ballari: It's not just the liquor lobby which ensured Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) Anupama Shenoy's exit from the force. She seems to have rubbed a sect of the powerful Lingayat community the wrong way, with sources claiming that Rs 40 lakh had changed hands to get her transferred in January this year.

Anupama's painful ordeal did not start with the recent dispute over construction of a liquor shop owned by a local Congress leader Veerendra Kumar.

A mining baron from Sandur, who heads a sect of the Lingayat community, was reportedly upset with her for taking the side of people opposing the construction of his iron ore pellet manufacturing plant at Yashwant Nagar village in Sandur.

On June 3, a day before resigning, Anupama had visited Yashwant Nagar and took local police officers to task for registering an FIR against 'innocent people' for allegedly demolishing the compound wall of the pellet factory.

Interestingly, on the same day, she had facilitated the trip of the pontiff of a particular Lingayat sect from Kottur town to Jagalur in Davangere district via Ujjini village in Kudligi taluk despite opposition from a rival sect, who reportedly argued that in the 1970s, a court had banned the movement of the community's seer in Ujjini.

“The DySP, arresting Mr Ravikumar and allowing a rival seer to pass through Ujjini, sparked anger in  the particular sect,” a source said. They even gathered on June 4 before the Kudligi Deputy Superintendent of Police office to protest against her", said a source.

Mr Ravikumar, one of the three persons detained in connection with the liquor shop dispute, is a relative of liquor merchant Veerendra who  belongs to the Lingayat sect headed by the Sandur mine baron.

"I know the liquor lobby alone did not mobilise funds to offer it to the minister for her transfer, the Sandur mine baron who wanted the Deputy Superintendent of Police  shunted out of the district was also part of the plan", the source claimed.