Prajwal Revanna, the MP and suspended Janata Dal Secular leader accused of sex crimes, arrived in India in the early hours of Friday and was arrested at Bengaluru
airport.

A city court later sent the 33-year-old to the custody of the special investigation team (SIT) for a week. He can meet his lawyers every day for an hour from 9.30am.

His lawyers had opposed police custody, seeking lenience on the ground that Prajwal had himself surrendered before the police. The SIT sought 14 days’ custody.

Prajwal arrived from Munich on a Lufthansa flight that landed at 12.53am. The SIT team, which was waiting for him, left the airport with him at 1.10am.

Prajwal, seeking re-election from Hassan, had left the country on April 27 — a day after his constituency voted — just as the allegations of sexual abuse against him became public. He claims the trip was a prescheduled one, that the charges are false, and that he did not know about them when he left India.

His return follows appeals from his grandfather and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda.

From the airport, Prajwal was driven to the SIT office in Bengaluru, which he reached around 2.15am, and questioned till around noon. He was then taken to the Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital for the mandatory post-arrest medical examination. He was driven to the court around 1.25pm.

Prajwal is accused of raping and filming several women, some of whom have come forward to lodge complaints against him.

Prajwal was flanked by three or four women SIT officers wherever he was taken on Friday. As he was driven in a Bolero from the airport to the SIT office, and later to the hospital, two women officers sat on either side of him in the middle seat. A third sat in the front seat. Later, four women officers were seen leading him to the court.

The MP faces three cases of sexual abuse, and has been arrested in connection with the first, registered in Holenarasipura, Hassan, on April 28. It is based on a complaint from a 47-year-old woman, who formerly worked as a cook at the Revanna family home, accusing Prajwal and his father — H.D. Revanna, the Holenarasipura MLA — of sexual misconduct.