SP Mahantesh, deputy director of the co-operative audit department of Karnataka was waylaid by five men on May 15 while returning from the Sahakara Nagar Cooperative Society in his car after an audit exercise. The men pulled him out of his Maruti 800 and hit him continuously with an iron rod until he fainted. Passers-by brought the injured Mahantesh to a hospital. He breathed his last on Sunday.

His murder triggered a backlash against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government. Ironically, it was the same party that stood by Anna Hazare and demanded a cleansing of the system and accused the central government of being complacent on the issue.

The case of Mahantesh is fourth in which an officer discharging his duty has been targeted in Karnataka in the recent past.

Senior IFS (Indian Forest Service) officer UV Singh, who was the chief investigating officer for Lokayukta and was instrumental in exposing the mining scam by the mining baron Janardhana Reddy and his brothers in Karnataka, was attacked by a group of people while he was inspecting encroachments on a lake bed in Bangalore.

Less than two weeks ago, on May 10, 2012, MN Nayak, assistant conservator of forests, Dandeli, was seriously injured as he was assaulted when he tried to stop a group of tourists from feeding crocodiles at Dandeli. Nayak died of his injuries in hospital.

In April 2009, Venkatesh, an RTI activist who was trying to expose land sharks in Bangalore was killed. His body was dumped on road to make it appear as if he had been run over by a speeding vehicle. His family and friends persisted in bringing out the truth and finally police were forced to investigate the case and file murder charges against his assailants.

In 2010, Tapal Ganesh, a mine owner who blew the whistle on Janardhana Reddy’s illegal mining empire in Bellary, was assaulted by armed men, while he was on his way to meet a team of officers from Indian Mining Bureau. The officers had been deputed by the supreme court to unearth instances of illegal mining.

Mahantesh, according to media reports, was a soft spoken Karnataka administrative services officer who hated corruption. Apparently, he had exposed large-scale irregularities in allotment of plots to government officials and politicians for which he was eliminated. And the best part was that the murder did not happen in some remote part of Karnataka but in the capital city of Bangalore.

Bangalore, nicknamed the Garden City for its gardens and parks and once called a pensioner's paradise, is no longer even a shadow of its glorious past. The second largest growing metropolis in the country, Bangalore is now home to people from all over the country and third largest hub for high net worth individuals. It is also home to over 10,000 dollar millionaires and about 60,000 super-rich people who have an investable surplus of INR 4.5 crore (US$1 million) and Rs 50 lakh (US$ 99,800) respectively.

With all the new wealth, crime, too, has risen. Regular chain-snatching and theft incidents are reported. Murders have become common.
Thomas Friedman once to spoke to his wife from the control room situated on Infosys campus. “Honey…the world is flat,” he confided in her. What he was saying was the truth. Be it software, brainpower, complex algorithms, knowledge workers, call centres, transmission protocols, breakthroughs in optical engineering; it was all happening in Bangalore.

But along with the new found wealth came the mafia, who wanted to exploit this sudden growth. Perhaps, Mahantesh like the other three is a victim of this mafia.