Karnataka CM's son in hotel brawl

FAMILY TROUBLE

H D Kumaraswamy Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy was in September accused of involvement in a deal in which 590 acres of government-owned forest near Bangalore was grabbed by land sharks. A probe is on. Earlier, a rebel BJP leader released a videotape allegedly showing the state's forest minister demanding bribes from Bellary mine owners in north Karnataka. Kumaraswamy says the videotape was fabricated to malign his coalition government. H D Revanna The Chief Minister's elder brother is the state's Public Works minister and was against forming a coalition government with the BJP. He later relented and joined the government. NICE, a company that is building the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor, has alleged that Revanna and Kumaraswamy have tried to defame it and stall the multi-crore project. H D Deve Gowda In 2006 when Kumaraswamy took the support of 40 rebel JD(S) MLAs and the BJP to topple the Dharam Singh Government, the former prime minister announced he would never support his son. Gowda even suspended Kumaraswamy and the rebel MLAs but there are allegations that all this was an eyewash and he worked behind the scenes to topple the government.

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Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy continues to be in the midst of some controversy or the other. First it was over corruption charges, now it’s because of his son Nikhil. He was caught in a brawl at Bangalore's Empire hotel.

All hell broke loose at the Empire hotel in Bangalore's Church Street early Thursday morning.

At around 0230 hrs, IST three boys came to the hotel and demanded food – one of them allegedly Nikhil Gowda, son of H D Kumaraswamy.

The hotel staff refused to serve food as the kitchen was closed angering the trio and they went on a rampage.

Windowpanes and a glass partition at the hotel's reception were broken in the brawl. Two hotel staffers got injured and apparently Nikhil too.

The hotel lodged a complaint at the Cubbon park police station. But now both the police and the hotel staff are keeping mum.

Bangalore Police Commissioner N Achuta Rao says, “Cops have two complaints. One lodged by Nikhil Gowda saying he had been attacked and one by the hotel people saying that three boys had come and caused a brawl.”

However Empire hotel GM Junaiz says, “Right now we don't know who they are but we will identify them, we have evidence."

The Opposition Congress was quick to react. They claim that one of their youth leaders was witness to the incident and identified Nikhil Gowda.

"One of our youth Congress functionaries informed us that last night the CM's son and his friends came here and done some goondaism. He should be arrested, CM's son or not – the law is for everyone" Youth Congress leader Omar Abdullah Sheikh says.

This isn’t 17-year-old Nikhil's first public brush with controversy. Earlier this year he had been denied admit card for XII standard exams after he fell short of attendance. He later dropped out of college.

And though this is the first time that he has been involved in a brawl of this sort, it comes at a particularly wrong time for the CM who's gearing up for the all important Chamundeshwari Assembly bye-elections.

It's negative publicity that the CM and the JD-S can do without.

Who is Nikhil Gowda

When H D Kumaraswamy took over as Karnataka Chief Minister, he had said in an interview given to Deccan Chronicle that he was worried about his son's academic performance.

A second-year dropout from city's Mahavir Jain college, Nikhil was also short of attendance in his college and was therefore refused the admit card for college examinatio early this year.

However, he later managed to sit for the exam.

With inputs from Shwetal Kamlapurkar