Did brother of BJP leader ‘conspire’ to ‘assassinate’ BJP MP Hegde?

Claiming a "deliberate attempt" seemed to have been made on his life, Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde on Tuesday said he had had a narrow escape at night when a lorry coming on the wrong side of the highway almost hit his vehicle.

"A deliberate attempt on my life seems to have been executed just now. A truck on NH, near Halageri in Ranebennur taluk of Haveri district has hit my escort vehicle which tried to hit my vehicle in the first instance. Since our vehicle was in top speed we escaped the hit", tweeted the Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

Hegde shared further details of the incident on Twitter, saying “The vehicle had been driven in the wrong direction and was parked right in the road horizontally. As soon as our convoy approached he has driven in great speed and had tried hitting our car. As our car was running in good speed we passed away before he could ram us.”

However, he said, the "support staff in the escort vehicle has suffered severe injuries in the form of shoulder fracture".

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had reacted to the "alleged assassination attempt" by saying it was just an accident and nothing else. Siddaramaiah said Anantkumar Hegde is struggling to overshadow BJP's CM candidate BS Yeddyurappa, and hence Hegde was making political use of an accident. The SP of Haveri also said it was just an accident. However, Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy did order a probe into the incident.

Reports that truck which hit Hegde’s convoy belongs to brother of BJP leader

On Thursday, however, the incident took on a new twist when journalist Rohini Singh tweeted claiming that Hegde had quietly cancelled a planned press conference after it was apparently discovered that the owner of the truck that hit Hegde’s convoy was none other than the brother of his own party office-bearer. Congress leader Shama Mohamed also tweeted a news report which said “Investigation revealed that the truck in question was owned by one Nagesh, a resident of Koppa in Chikmagalur. Nagesh turned out to be the brother of Ramesh, the block president of the BJP in Koppa taluk.”

Based on this new information, National Herald tried several times on Thursday to contact Anantkumar Hegde to get his version, but he did not answer the phone. We finally spoke to his Personal Assistant Suresh, who denied that Hedge had called any press conference today on this issue, saying that Hedge is busy on the campaign trail in Haliyal for past two days. When asked whether he could confirm that the truck which reportedly hit Hegde’s convoy belonged to a the brother of a local BJP leader, Suresh said he had no such information.

If Mr Hegde returns our call, we will add his version as well.