As soon as the suspended Janata Dal-Secular MP Prajwal Revanna landed at the Bengaluru airport in the wee hours of Friday, there was a posse of women police personnel led by women Indian Police Service (IPS) officers waiting to execute the arrest warrant against him in sexual assault cases.
Three cases have been registered against him after a huge cache of leaked videos purportedly showing several women being sexually abused by Prajwal.
The 33-year-old grandson of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, who is seeking re-election as a National Democratic Alliance candidate from Hassan, fled the country on April 27 and returned in the early hours of Friday.
Soon after he alighted from the plane from Munich in Germany to Bengauru, he was received by women in Khaki, sources in the SIT said.
During the procedure of executing the arrest warrant, he was flanked by the women police who were led by two IPS officers, Suman D Pennekar and Seema Latkar.
The Hassan MP was then taken in a jeep in which only women police were there. They took him to the CID office.
"It was a conscious call to send all women officers to arrest Prajwal, sending home a message that the JD(S) leader exploited his seat and power as an MP with women. The same women have authority to arrest him through all legal proceedings," a source in the SIT said.
There was also a symbolic message to the victims that women officers were not afraid of anyone, the source said.