Prajwal Revanna Case: From 2024 Video Scandal to Life Sentence
Follow the Prajwal Revanna case timeline, from the 2024 video controversy and arrest to his life sentence, court proceedings and political fallout.
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The Prajwal Revanna case timeline runs from pen drives of explicit videos circulating in Hassan days before the April 2024 Lok Sabha vote to a life sentence in August 2025, and on into appeals, pending trials and a 2026 prison-phone investigation. Revanna, the grandson of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and then the JD(S) MP for Hassan, faced four sexual-offence FIRs. He was convicted in one of them, the rape of a former domestic worker. This page separates that conviction from the allegations still to be tried.
💡 Short Answer
Explicit videos allegedly recorded by Prajwal Revanna circulated in Hassan in April 2024. He left for Germany the day after polling, was arrested on his return on 31 May 2024, and lost his seat on 4 June by 42,649 votes. On 1 August 2025 a Bengaluru special court convicted him of raping a former domestic worker and sentenced him to life imprisonment the next day. His appeal and three other cases were pending as of 9 November 2026.
Prajwal Revanna Case: Key Questions
The Case in Ten Points
- One conviction, not four: he was convicted only in the former domestic worker’s rape case.
- Sentence: life imprisonment on 2 August 2025, with Rs 11.25 lakh from the fines going to the survivor.
- Timing: the videos circulated days before Hassan voted on 26 April 2024.
- Flight and return: he left for Germany on 27 April and was arrested on landing on 31 May.
- Investigation: a 28-member CID SIT under ADGP B.K. Singh, 14 of them women.
- Key evidence: a saree left at the farmhouse that carried his DNA, plus videos found not to be morphed.
- Political cost: suspended by the JD(S) on 30 April; lost Hassan by 42,649 votes.
- Appeals so far: the High Court refused to suspend his sentence and the Supreme Court refused to move his trials.
- 2026: a pen-drive evidence ruling, witness-threat inquiry and prison-phone case.
- Family: his father’s and mother’s cases are separate; H.D. Revanna was discharged of one offence in December 2025.
The Four Cases: Why the Distinction Matters
Different complainants, different incidents, separate trials.
| Case | Registered | Allegations | Status, November 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Former domestic worker | May 2024, after her rescue | Rape at the Gannikada farmhouse and in Bengaluru in 2021; recording the assaults | Convicted 1 Aug 2025; life sentence; appeal pending |
| Former JD(S) zilla panchayat member | 1 May 2024, CID | Repeated rape, including at gunpoint; recording and threats | Trial under way; unproven |
| Cook employed by the family | 28 Apr 2024, Holenarasipura | Sexual harassment, stalking, intimidation; rape charges later added against Prajwal | Trial under way; unproven. Father discharged of one offence |
| Video-call case | June 2024, CID cyber police | Coerced nude video calls, recording without consent, threats | Bail plea in High Court, June 2026; unproven |
Reports group and number these FIRs differently. The kidnapping case against H.D. Revanna and Bhavani Revanna, and the 2026 prison-phone case, are separate from all four.
April–June 2024: From the Pen Drives to the Arrest
Timeline: The Prajwal Revanna Case, 2023–2026
Newest first. Colour shows the strand each event belongs to.
Where the case stands Courts
Established: Prajwal Revanna is serving a life sentence after his conviction on 1 August 2025 for the rape of a former domestic worker. The Karnataka High Court refused to suspend that sentence on 3 December 2025, and his appeal against the conviction is pending.
Still open: The trials in the other cases, including the alleged rape of a former JD(S) worker and the alleged sexual harassment of a cook employed by the family, have not reached a verdict in any report we found. A bail plea in a separate video-call case was before the High Court from June 2026.
Separate tracks: A court-ordered SIT inquiry into threats reported by a witness, and a police case over a phone found in his prison cell, run separately from the sexual-offence trials.
Prison transfer called off; alleged phone suppliers denied bail Prison
What happened: The prisons department ordered him moved to Hindalga Central Prison in Belagavi after the phone recovery, then reversed the decision on the evening of Friday 9 October. He stays at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison in Bengaluru.
Related: On 14 October The New Indian Express reported that three people accused of supplying the phone had been denied bail.
Forensic report on the seized phone; five arrested Prison
What police said: A forensic examination found more than 145 video clips on the phone, including pornographic material and OTT films, and over 100 clips on the pen drive. Call records reportedly showed unauthorised contact with his family through intermediaries and direct calls to a female friend.
Arrests: Police arrested five people on 11 September over the alleged smuggling. They allege a prison warder helped bring the phone in and another inmate arranged the SIM card.
His position: According to police, he denied owning the phone, saying inmates shared it in turns, but admitted the notebook was his.
Two days of police custody over the prison phone Prison
What happened: A magistrate remanded him and fellow inmate Prathap Rai to police custody until 10am on 10 September. The FIR invokes Section 42 of the Karnataka Prisons (Amendment) Act, 2022 and Section 323 of the BNS, which covers prohibited articles in prison.
Witness reports threat calls; court orders SIT inquiry Courts
What happened: A 43-year-old witness in the case about a woman who worked at the family residence in Holenarasipura told the special court that callers claiming to be his supporters had warned her not to testify and threatened to “teach her and her son a lesson”.
Court order: The court directed the CID SIT’s ADGP to inquire into the calls and submit a report.
What is not established: Who made the calls. The direction is for an inquiry, not a finding.
Phone and pen drive found in his prison cell Prison
What happened: During a surprise search of the security-division barracks ordered by the city police, the Central Crime Branch seized a Redmi phone, a SIM card, a charger, a pocket notebook and a pen drive from the cell he shared with another inmate.
Why it matters: It raised questions about prison security for a high-profile convict whose own case turned on digital evidence.
High Court keeps his pen-drive objections open Courts
Background: On 24 June 2026 the trial court overruled his objections to a pen drive being marked as evidence through prosecution witnesses in another rape trial.
Order: The High Court disposed of his petition after the state said it had no objection to the trial court considering his objections at the appropriate stage.
What it did not do: It did not rule the pen drive inadmissible or acquit him. Marking an exhibit does not settle whether it is admissible or how much weight it carries.
High Court seeks SIT reply on bail in video-call case Courts
The allegation: The prosecution says that between 2019 and 2021, after a woman approached him for a school admission under the MP quota, he coerced her into appearing nude on video calls, recorded them without consent and used them to threaten her.
Charges: Sections 354A, 354B, 354D and 506 of the IPC and Sections 66E and 67 of the IT Act.
Status: A notice asking for objections is a procedural step, not a ruling on the allegations.
H.D. Revanna discharged on a sexual-harassment charge Courts
What happened: The magistrate declined to condone a four-year delay in the complaint against Prajwal’s father for the offence under Section 354A of the IPC, which has a three-year limitation period, and discharged him from that offence.
What it does not change: The order concerns H.D. Revanna and one offence. It does not affect Prajwal’s conviction or his own pending charges.
Supreme Court refuses to move his trials Courts
What he sought: Transfer of his two pending rape trials out of the special court, alleging bias by the presiding judge.
Outcome: The court found the bias claim unfounded and said observations from the bench do not show a closed mind. It directed the trial court to decide on the evidence and left his complaints about the judge’s remarks to his appeal.
High Court refuses to suspend his life sentence Courts
Defence argument: Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra argued that the evidence was weak and poorly linked, the complaint came three to four years late, the farmhouse no longer existed, and the case was a “media trial” and political vendetta.
Prosecution: Special public prosecutor Ravivarma Kumar said release could endanger witnesses, noting the survivor is also a witness in the kidnapping case against his parents.
Ruling: Given the gravity of the offence and its effect on the pending cases, the bench refused. It said the evidence arguments belong to the final appeal hearing.
Appeal against conviction filed Courts
Grounds: He alleged contradictions between the survivor’s complaint and testimony, claimed the police forced her to complain, and questioned stains found on a bed years later.
Status: These are defence arguments. The appeal had not been decided as of November 2026.
Life imprisonment Courts
Sentence: Life imprisonment, on two counts of rape, three of sexual harassment and one each of criminal intimidation and destroying evidence. The court ordered Rs 11.25 lakh from the fines paid to the survivor.
Reasoning cited: The prosecution argued for the maximum because the accused was a lawmaker. He told the court that no one had complained against him while he was “ruling” Hassan.
Convicted of raping a former domestic worker Courts
The case: A 48-year-old woman who worked at the family’s Gannikada farmhouse in Holenarasipura said he raped her there and at his Bengaluru house during the 2021 Covid lockdown, and recorded the assaults.
Evidence: The video recordings; DNA matched to traces on a saree she had left at the farmhouse; forensic findings that the videos were not morphed; and a medical comparison of body features in the video. The 1,632-page chargesheet listed 113 witnesses.
Limits: The verdict decides this case only.
The trial Courts
What happened: Charges were framed on 3 April. The trial opened on 2 May with the survivor’s testimony, closed on 18 July, and was adjourned on 30 July for clarifications before the verdict.
Witnesses: His former driver, Karthik N., testified that he had seen more than 2,000 explicit pictures and 40 to 50 videos on Revanna’s phone.
Request for printed copies of digital evidence refused Courts
What happened: The High Court refused his request for printed copies of all the digital evidence in the rape case, which included intimate images of victims.
High Court and Supreme Court refuse bail Courts
What happened: On 21 October the High Court denied him regular and anticipatory bail in two rape cases and a sexual-assault case. On 11 November the Supreme Court rejected his bail plea.
Chargesheets and DNA evidence Investigation
Chargesheets: The SIT filed its first chargesheet on 23 August 2024. A second, 1,632 pages long, followed on 9 September; The Indian Express later reported this as the chargesheet in the domestic-worker case.
Forensics: By 2 November 2024 it was reported that his DNA matched traces on the survivor’s clothing. Voice samples and images were also matched to the videos.
Fourth FIR: the video-call case Allegations
Allegation: A woman alleged that he sexually harassed her over video calls, recorded them and used them to threaten her. Reports said former BJP MLA Preetham Gowda and others were also named, accused of sharing the images.
Status: A chargesheet in this case was reported in September 2024. The allegations are unproven.
He loses Hassan Politics
Result: Congress’s Shreyas M. Patel polled 6,72,988 votes to Prajwal’s 6,30,339, a margin of 42,649.
Why it matters: It was the JD(S)’s first loss in Hassan in 20 years, in a seat linked to H.D. Deve Gowda since 1991. In 2019 Prajwal had won by 1,41,324 votes as the JD(S)’s only MP from Karnataka.
Caution: A result cannot show how much the scandal itself moved voters.
Arrested on landing in Bengaluru Investigation
What happened: After a video message on 27 May promising to appear on 31 May, he flew in from Germany and was arrested just after midnight by an all-women SIT team, then remanded to police custody.
Why all-women: The SIT has said the choice was deliberate.
Survivor rescued, H.D. Revanna arrested, warrant issued Investigation
Rescue: The SIT rescued the missing domestic worker from a farmhouse near Mysuru on 4 May; some reports say 5 May. Her complaint led to the rape case in which he was later convicted.
Arrests: H.D. Revanna was arrested on 4 May in the kidnapping case and got conditional bail on 13 May. Bhavani Revanna later sought anticipatory bail.
Abroad: Interpol issued a Blue Corner Notice on 7 May to locate him. This is a request for information, not an arrest warrant. A special court issued an arrest warrant on 18 May.
Rape case registered; kidnapping case filed Allegations
What happened: On 1 May the CID registered a case on a complaint by a former JD(S) zilla panchayat member alleging repeated rape, including at gunpoint. On 2 May a kidnapping case was filed against H.D. Revanna over the disappearance of a domestic worker, and lookout notices were issued for Prajwal.
Status: The trial in the former JD(S) worker’s case was under way in August 2025 and remains unproven.
JD(S) suspends him Politics
What happened: The party suspended him pending investigation. Reports later described him as expelled.
Why it matters: He belonged to the family that founded and leads the party.
First FIR filed; a woman goes missing Allegations
First FIR: A cook who had worked for the family accused H.D. Revanna and Prajwal of sexual harassment, stalking and intimidation (IPC 354A, 354D, 506 and 509). Rape charges were later added against Prajwal on the basis of her statement.
Missing woman: On 29 April a domestic worker seen in the videos went missing. Investigators alleged she was abducted to stop her going to the police.
SIT formed as he leaves for Germany Investigation
What happened: The day after Hassan voted, he left the country on a diplomatic passport. That day the state formed an SIT under ADGP Bijay Kumar Singh, acting on a complaint from the State Women’s Commission.
His position: His side called it a pre-planned trip and said the videos were morphed and politically motivated.
Hassan votes Politics
What happened: Polling went ahead with him as the BJP-JD(S) alliance candidate, two days after pen drives were reported to be circulating in the constituency.
Pen drives circulate in Hassan Allegations
What happened: Pen drives reported to hold more than 2,900 explicit videos, allegedly recorded by him, were distributed across Hassan. His election agent filed a police complaint against Naveen Gowda and others, saying the videos were morphed.
The harm: Spreading the videos further violated the women in them. This article does not reproduce or link to them.
A gag order, then a feud with his driver Courts
Gag order: On 1 June 2023 he sued 86 media outlets and three individuals, including his former driver, to stop publication of “fake news, morphed photographs/video”. The court granted an injunction on 2 June.
Driver: The driver had left in March 2023 after about seven years. In December 2023 he filed a police complaint alleging that Prajwal and his mother had kidnapped him and his wife in a land dispute.
January 2024: BJP leader G. Devaraje Gowda, who was representing the driver, referred to the videos in public in Hassan.
The Verdict: How the First Case Was Proved
The convicted case turned on a survivor who, according to the prosecution, stayed silent for years because the accused was a powerful MP. The prosecutors credited her family’s support after the videos surfaced, her statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC, and one detail: she remembered leaving a saree at the farmhouse when she quit. SIT officers went back with a second search warrant, found it, and the Forensic Science Laboratory matched traces on it to his DNA.
The videos showed the survivor’s face but not his. The SIT said it drew on court rulings from Japan and Turkey to establish identity by medically comparing his body with the recordings, and the FSL matched voice samples and images. Forensic analysis also found that the videos had not been morphed, which answered the defence’s central public claim.
“He is a people’s representative and he could have said that he served Hassan district, not ruled it.”
Special public prosecutor Jagadish Byatha, after sentencing, 2 August 2025
After the Conviction: Appeals, Evidence Rulings and the Prison Case
Legal Impact: Six Dimensions
Video files, devices, voice samples and forensic reports carried the prosecution. The July 2026 High Court order confirmed that marking a pen drive as an exhibit does not stop the defence from contesting its admissibility later.
Four complainants means four sets of charges, witnesses and verdicts. The August 2025 conviction is not evidence of guilt in the other cases.
The High Court cited risk to witnesses when it refused to suspend his sentence. In August 2026 a witness reported threat calls, and the special court ordered an SIT inquiry.
A phone, SIM, pen drive and notebook found in a high-security cell led to arrests, including an alleged warder link, and a wider probe into smuggling.
The conviction stands unless the High Court sets it aside. Refusing interim relief does not decide the appeal, and filing an appeal does not erase the conviction.
The delay in reporting cut both ways. The survivor’s fear of a powerful accused explained her silence, but a four-year delay led to H.D. Revanna’s discharge on a lesser offence that has a three-year limit.
Political Impact: The JD(S) and the Deve Gowda Family
Hassan changes hands. Hassan had been linked to H.D. Deve Gowda since 1991. In 2019 Prajwal was the JD(S)’s only Lok Sabha winner in Karnataka. In 2024 the 31-year-old Congress candidate Shreyas M. Patel, grandson of G. Puttaswamy Gowda, who once beat Deve Gowda in Hassan, took the seat. It was the party’s first loss there in two decades.
Pressure on the alliance. The scandal broke while the JD(S) was fighting the election in alliance with the BJP. It became a campaign issue in the later phases of polling in Karnataka, and the JD(S) moved to suspend him within four days of the SIT being formed.
The family’s position. The Revanna family has called the cases a Congress conspiracy to break its hold on Hassan. The High Court refused to suspend his sentence, and the Supreme Court rejected his claim of judicial bias. The cases against his father and mother have to be judged on their own, and his father was discharged of one offence.
A wider debate. The case raised questions about how women can report abuse by powerful men, and about the harm done when intimate recordings are passed around, even by people who say they are exposing wrongdoing.
✅ Established by courts
- Convicted of rape in the domestic-worker case (1 Aug 2025).
- Life imprisonment (2 Aug 2025).
- Sentence not suspended pending appeal (3 Dec 2025).
- No transfer of his other trials (11 Dec 2025).
❓ Pending or unproven
- His appeal against the conviction.
- The allegations in the three other sexual-offence cases.
- Who made the threat calls to a witness.
- The prison-phone case.
Key People and Institutions
| Person / institution | Role |
|---|---|
| Prajwal Revanna | Hassan MP 2019–24; convicted in one rape case, serving life imprisonment |
| H.D. Deve Gowda | Former prime minister and JD(S) founder; his grandfather |
| H.D. Revanna | His father, Holenarasipura MLA; accused in the cook’s case and the kidnapping case |
| Bhavani Revanna | His mother; named in the kidnapping investigation |
| B.K. Singh | ADGP who headed the CID Special Investigation Team |
| Santhosh Gajanan Bhat | Judge of the special court who convicted and sentenced him |
| Shreyas M. Patel | Congress MP who won Hassan in 2024 |
| Karthik N. | His former driver, described as the whistleblower; prosecution witness |
| Karnataka High Court | Bail, appeal, sentence-suspension and evidence rulings |
| Supreme Court | Refused bail (Nov 2024) and transfer of trials (Dec 2025) |
Legal Terms Explained
- FIR: First Information Report, the police record that starts a criminal investigation into a cognisable offence.
- SIT: Special Investigation Team set up for one matter, here under the Karnataka CID.
- Chargesheet: the police report at the end of an investigation setting out offences, evidence and witnesses.
- Framing of charges: the court’s formal statement of the offences the accused will be tried for. It is not a finding of guilt.
- Suspension of sentence: interim relief under Section 389 CrPC that lets a convict out on bail while an appeal is heard.
- Blue Corner Notice: an Interpol request for information on a person’s identity, location or activities. It is not an arrest warrant.
- Discharge: the court drops a charge before trial. It is not an acquittal after trial.
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Checked against court reporting by LiveLaw, Bar & Bench and The News Minute, and against The Indian Express, India Today, PTI and The New Indian Express.
⚠️ Editorial Note and Legal Status
This article separates Prajwal Revanna’s conviction in one rape case from the allegations in the other cases, which have not been proved in court. The allegations against H.D. Revanna and Bhavani Revanna are treated separately from Prajwal’s conviction. Survivors and witnesses are not named, and the videos are not reproduced or linked. The status reflects public court and police reporting up to 9 November 2026. Corrections to the brief this page began from: the winning candidate is Shreyas M. Patel, not Patil; the ECI margin was 42,649 votes, not 43,588; the fourth FIR was registered in late June 2024 (reports vary between 12 and 25 June); and the court ordered Rs 11.25 lakh from the fines to be paid to the survivor. We dropped the brief’s 9 October 2025 High Court notice and 13 September 2024 chargesheet dates because we could not confirm them, and we did not repeat its claim that witness protection was ordered: the special court directed an inquiry.
Related Reading on AiTimeline
Sources & further reading
Every dated entry above was checked against these references. Last reviewed 9 November 2026.
- The Indian Express: Prajwal Revanna sex abuse allegations, from gag order to pen drives, how the case unfolded (30 April 2024)
- India Today: Prajwal Revanna arrested, timeline of the case (31 May 2024)
- The Indian Express: Prajwal Revanna bites the dust, JD(S) loses family turf for the first time in 20 years (5 June 2024)
- ThePrint (PTI): From sex tape scandal to conviction, timeline of rape case against Prajwal Revanna (2 August 2025)
- The Indian Express: Former MP Prajwal Revanna gets life sentence for rape of domestic worker (3 August 2025)
- The Indian Express: A saree, forensic science and a woman's grit, how Karnataka cops cracked the Prajwal Revanna rape case (16 August 2025)
- Bar & Bench: Prajwal Revanna moves Karnataka High Court challenging conviction, life sentence (29 September 2025)
- The News Minute: Karnataka HC rejects Prajwal Revanna's plea to suspend life sentence (3 December 2025)
- LiveLaw: Supreme Court dismisses Prajwal Revanna's plea to transfer trial of rape cases, rejects argument of bias (11 December 2025)
- Bar & Bench: Bengaluru court discharges HD Revanna from sexual harassment case (29 December 2025)
- LiveLaw: Karnataka High Court directs trial court to consider Prajwal Revanna's objections to pendrive evidence (31 July 2026)
- The New Indian Express: Threat to witness in Prajwal Revanna case, court directs SIT to investigate (22 August 2026)
- LiveLaw: Prajwal Revanna sent to 2-day police custody over recovery of mobile phone from prison cell (9 September 2026)
- The Indian Express: Phone seized from Prajwal Revanna in jail had over 145 porn clips, OTT movies, police say (13 September 2026)
- The New Indian Express: Prajwal Revanna to remain in Parappana Agrahara jail (10 October 2026)