Karnataka is not a safe place for honest civil servants. They are transferred from one uninteresting post to another and denied facilities they are entitled to. If they do not mend their ways they can meet with mysterious death. Whether the BJP is in power or the Congress, the civil servants are constant and they are quick to adjust to the requirements of the party in power and in the process they too enrich themselves. When BS Yeddyurappa was Chief Minister, the Reddy brothers of Bidar were able to export Rs 3,500 crore worth of iron ore illegally without let or hindrance, thanks to the collaboration of officialdom. The entire hierarchy of the BJP benefited from the munificence of the Reddy brothers. When Anurag Tewari, 36, a Karnataka cadre IAS officer of 2007 batch died mysteriously in the high security area of Lucknow last week, tongues started wagging that he was about to expose a Rs 2,000-crore scam in the food and civil supplies department of which he was the commissioner. Chief Minister Siddaramiah wrote immediately to his Uttar Pradesh counterpart, Yogi Adithyanath, to order a thorough investigation by a competent team of investigators, saying the people of Karnataka were anguished by the untimely death of the young officer. Intriguingly, the Karnataka government deputed two senior IAS officers, Abhiram Shankar and Pankaj Pandey, to Lucknow to “assist” the investigation. The post mortem report of Tewari said he died of asphyxiation. His viscera have been preserved for further analysis. The Lucknow police wanted to conduct a second post mortem. Before that, his body was taken away to his home town in Bahraich district for the last rites conducted in the presence of a gathering of bureaucrats. Considering all things, Adithyanath recommended a CBI investigation. Siddaramaiah had no option but to acquiesce.

Three years ago, another young, upright IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre, DK Ravi, 34, met with unnatural death. As Deputy Commissioner of Kolar, he was actively involved in stopping illegal mining from lakebeds in the district. He got into trouble when he initiated action against a company close to the political establishment in 2011. Finding him a thorn in the flesh, the Siddaramiah government transferred him to Bengaluru to hold him in leash and posted him as Additional Commissioner, Commercial Tax. He targeted leading builders and forced them to pay taxes, much to the chagrin of his political bosses. One fine afternoon, his body was found hanging in his bedroom. Persistent demands to hand over the investigation to CBI to find out whether it was a case of homicide or suicide were resisted by the government. Eventually, investigation of Ravi’s death was handed over to the CBI by which time all evidence had been destroyed. After 20 months of probing Ravi's private life, the CBI filed a closure report in March 2015, calling it suicide due to personal reasons.