Aam Aadmi Party Files Police Complaint Against BJP MLA Satish Reddy, After His Name Pops Up In BBMP Bed Booking Scam, Demand His Arrest

The Aam Aadmi Party Karnataka today filed a police complaint against BJP MLA Satish Reddy, accusing him of being the “kingpin” of the COVID bed booking scam, which he himself raised two days ago.

In a complaint to Bangalore Commissioner, Kamal Pant, AAP’s state convenor, Prithvi Reddy wrote that Satish Reddy and his followers were involved in the COVID bed-blocking scam, which they alleged has resulted in the death of 17 people.

“In the past couple of days it has come to light that there has been a huge scam in the booking of Hospital beds and ICUs in Bangalore city. ICU Beds are constantly not available to the common man and this may be due to nexus between BBMP Officials, Politicians and middlemen organising this booking of beds,” the complaint read.

Citing the report published by Vijay Karnataka newspaper, the complaint accused of MLA Satish Reddy being behind the scam.

The news report accuses the BJP legislator from Bommanahalli of putting his agents in the BBMP war room, who in turn were booking beds for his supporters. Reddy and his agents are alleged to have issued threats to officials in the war room to prioritize his supporters over others. The damning report also accused that beds were being sold for monetary exchange to distressed patients.

“This is not a matter only of corruption and criminal neglect of duty but a matter of loss of lives amounting to murder. Various high court and supreme court has held that denial of medical health amounts of criminal negligence,” the complaint said.

On Tuesday, Reddy accompanied by Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya, Basavanagudi MLA Ravi Subramanya, and Chickpet MLA Uday Garudachar held a press conference accused city municipal officials of accepting bribes to allot hospital beds. They alleged that a “nexus of BBMP officials and frontline health workers” were creating artificial scarcity and that beds were being booked under the name of asymptomatic patients who were in home isolation.

The BJP legislators also picked up on Muslims working in the BBMP COVID war room and took objections to them working there. In the video of the incident that has since gone viral, they were seen barging into a BBMP COVID war room and asking officers present if BBMP was a Hajj Bhavan or a Madrasa to recruit Muslims.

The South zone war room has 205 designates telecallers, of which only 17 were Muslims. In the video, Surya is seen asking the BBMP official what process was followed to recruit the volunteers in the COVID war room, and read out a list of 17 people, who all happened to be Muslims. Surya, Reddy, and the other BJP leaders were seen asking officials to remove the Muslim employees from the war room.

The 17 people were sacked immediately.

On his part, Reddy has denied any involvement in the scandal and said that the accusations against him have no substance.