12-05-2025
Confiscate Reddy's ‘ill-gotten' money, says Hiremath
Terming the seven-year sentence awarded to mining baron and former Minister Janardhan Reddy as historic, founder-president of Samaj Parivartana Samudaya (SPS) S.R. Hiremath has urged both the Central and State governments to immediately take all steps to confiscate what he claimed Mr. Reddy's 'ill-gotten' money 'stashed' in India and abroad.
Addressing presspersons in Hubballi on Monday, Mr. Hiremath said that the SPS and like-minded organisations are committed to continuing the legal battle to take the case to its logical conclusion.
Mr. Hiremath said that while Principal Special Judge for CBI cases T. Raghu Ram delivered a historic judgement indicting Mr. Reddy and three others, including a former bureaucrat, and sentencing them to seven-year imprisonment in the Obulapuram Mining Company Private Ltd. (OMCPL) case, there are still 14 other criminal cases pertaining to illegal mining under trial.
Mr. Hiremath said that the judgement had revealed the sordid story of collusion between the mining mafia and corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, because of large-scale plundering of natural resources the people in the mining areas had to suffer, while the reports of the Karnataka Lokayukta and CEC are yet to be implemented by the governments, he said.
He said that the judgement had come as a ray of hope for those fighting injustice especially by the mighty.
The SPS and like-minded organisations will urge the governments to confiscate 'ill-gotten' money and utilise it for healing the wounds inflicted on nature and also on the people of the region.
'Extending support'
Mr. Hiremath said that the National Committee for Protection of Natural Resources (NCPNR) will support the ongoing struggle of the Jenu Kuruba and Adivasi women, men and children from Nagarahole National Park Area asserting their claims of Individual Forest Rights (IFR), Community Forest Rights (CFR) and Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR) under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006.
The NCPNR will urge the government to withdraw all forces, including the Forest Department, the State Police and the Karnataka State Tiger Protection Forces (STPF) which are currently forcibly trying to drive them out from their ancestral villages, including Karadikallu Hattur Kollehaadi from inside the Nagarahole forest, he said.
