Sex scandals in Indian politics

India’s complex relationship with political sex scandals goes all the way back to 1978…

Transcript

00:00Rajmal Rewana's case might be the most recent sex scandal to rock the country,

00:05but it's most definitely not the first.

00:11This was probably the first sex scandal in independent India's politics.

00:16The year was 1978, and an out-of-power Indira Gandhi was woken up by her son Sanjay

00:24in the middle of the night and showed 15 polaroids.

00:28It was Defence Minister Jagjeevan Ram's son, Suresh Ram,

00:32in compromising positions with his then-mistress, an alleged teenager.

00:38While Suresh Ram said he was kidnapped and these photographs were taken at gunpoint,

00:44leaders such as Raj Narayan said they were found in the glove compartment of Ram's Mercedes Benz.

00:52The photographs were published by Menka Gandhi, Indira's daughter-in-law,

00:56and the then-editor of Surya magazine, effectively killing Jagjeevan Ram's

01:02high chances of becoming the country's first Dalit Prime Minister.

01:11In 2009, the then-governor of Andhra Pradesh, Narayan Dutt Tiwari,

01:17was unceremoniously pushed out of the Rajbhavan following a sex scandal.

01:21A Telugu channel had aired a clip allegedly showing the governor in bed with three women,

01:27who the channel said worked at the Rajbhavan.

01:30As pressure mounted for the Congress to sack its old warhorse,

01:35Tiwari resigned, citing health reasons.

01:38But his saga didn't end there.

01:40Years later, paternity tests proved that he had a son in Delhi,

01:44something which he had denied for years.

01:47Tiwari then accepted his 30-something-year-old son,

01:51and also married the man's mother at the age of 89.

01:59In 2016, H.Y. Mehti was the excise minister in Karnataka,

02:04when an RTI activist accused him of promising help in exchange for sexual favours.

02:11The activist alleged that Mehti had been recorded in the act, and there was a CD of it.

02:16Although Mehti initially denied these allegations, he resigned

02:21after the tape surfaced and the case was handed over to the CID.

02:25The following May, the agency cleared Mehti of all charges by stating that the clip was doctored,

02:33and said that some opposition leaders had hatched a conspiracy against him.

02:38The woman also allegedly took back her complaint.

02:41In 2021, Karnataka's water resources minister, Ramesh Jarkeholi,

02:50had to resign amid allegations of sexual harassment.

02:54He allegedly sought sexual favours from women in exchange for jobs,

02:59and a CD of him had been circulating with visuals of the minister in compromising positions.

03:05The police, however, were yet to verify the video's authenticity.

03:09The case also snowballed into a political slugfest in the state.