After hospital discharge, Yeddyurappa lands in lock-up

After desperately avoiding being locked up in jail, former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa, finally landed in a cell in a central prison in Bangalore on Wednesday, as even state hospitals denied he had any serious medical ailments.

The disgraced BJP ex chief minister, who was sent to judicial custody by a Lokayukta court for having illegally denotified land in Bangalore, allegedly for monetary gains, had avoided the lock-up by claiming he was not well.

However, on Tuesday, he was moved out of the state-owned Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research in Bangalore after it found there were no blockages in his heart. Yeddyurappa again avoided going to jail by seeking admission at another state-run hospital on Tuesday night.

But on Wednesday morning, following adverse media coverage about his feigning illness to avoid going to jail, the former chief minister had no alternative except to land in prison. Even last Saturday, when the Lokayukta court remanded him to judicial custody, Yeddyurappa failed to show up, claiming he had backache.

The court, however, issued an arrest warrant, forcing the ex-chief minister to surrender before it. After arrest, he refused to go to his cell at the Parappana Agrahara central prison, spending time at the jail hospital. He then managed to get himself admitted late Saturday night at Sri Jayadeva hospital.

Yeddyurappa, who was forced to resign as chief minister of Karnataka – he was the first BJP chief minister of a southern state – after an indictment by the Lokayukta in the multi-billion-rupee Bellary mining scam, has had to be virtually kicked out at every stage in recent months, either by public opinion, the media, lawyers, sections of his party and finally the courts.