In India’s election, a flash drive, sex abuse videos – and a missing MP

An MP from a party allied with Prime Minister Modi’s BJP in Karnataka state has been accused of sexually abusing multiple women, sparking a controversy amid a national election.

Bengaluru, India – Standing behind former Indian Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, the country’s current leader Narendra Modi smiled into the cameras. Next to Modi was HD Revanna, the son of Deve Gowda. In another photo of that meeting, a young man can be seen standing a few feet away from Modi.

That young man, Prajwal Revanna, is now at the centre of a political firestorm that threatens to reset the electoral landscape of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

Prajwal, his father and grandfather belong to the Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), a regional party allied with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the ongoing national elections. It is an alliance that the BJP was counting on to deliver its coalition a majority of Karnataka’s 28 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament.

But the leak of nearly 3,000 videos, allegedly shot by the 33-year-old Prajwal, apparently showing him sexually abusing multiple women, has tuned the alliance into a weapon the opposition Congress Party is using against Modi and the BJP.

Prajwal, the sitting member of parliament from Hassan in Karnataka, contested as the coalition’s candidate from the constituency again when it voted on April 26, in the second phase of the national election. Now, the sex scandal hovers over the remainder of Karnataka’s election on May 7 – when 14 of the state’s seats vote.

Alka Lamba, the president of the Congress Party’s women’s wing, said the videos had “shaken the conscience of Kannadigas [people whose roots originate from Karnataka and speak Kannada] and Indians