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Bengaluru, Sep 28: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing charges against arrested Karnataka BJP MLA N. Munirathna Naidu, including allegations of rape, honey-trapping, and other offences, on Saturday conducted raids at his residence and 15 other locations across the city.

Sources confirmed that the raids were taking place at his Vyalikaval residence and other properties owned by the BJP MLA. The operation is being conducted by the SIT under the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) led by ACP Kavitha.

The team is examining documents, electronic devices, and other materials related to the rape and honey-trapping case. The SIT is being supported by experts from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), with Superintendent of Police (SP) Sowmya Latha also participating in the search and inspection at Munirathna’s Vyalikaval residence.

According to sources, the raids were triggered by information provided by the victim, who alleged that Munirathna recorded footage of sexual assaults and used it to blackmail politicians and public servants, including IAS and IPS officers.

The victim reportedly revealed that she was used to entrap the woman who had lodged a rape case against a senior IFS officer. She was allegedly instructed to frame the rape victim in a drug peddling case.

The complainant told police that she was tasked with capturing compromising videos of the rape victim who had filed the case against the IFS officer. She claimed that, after several failed attempts to obtain the videos, the victim was drugged with sleeping pills, and obscene footage was recorded without her consent. Later, the IFS officer was bailed out from the charges.

Furthermore, the complainant has accused MLA Munirathna of raping her at his office within the state legislature, in his official vehicle, and at his godown. She has alleged that he recorded videos of these assaults.

Police sources also revealed that the victim in the MLA's case provided details of a plot involving sending HIV-infected women to Munirathna's targets in an attempt to ruin them politically and personally. She also disclosed the names of several politicians whom she had entrapped through honey-trapping.

The woman further claimed that Munirathna had threatened to have her son kidnapped and killed if she refused to comply with his demands. According to her, the MLA had a well-organised team dedicated to carrying out these honey-trapping operations, and she provided details about his close associates and relatives involved in the scheme.

Munirathna, who was in judicial custody following his arrest in the rape and honey-trap case, has now been taken into the custody of the SIT.

The MLA was transferred from Bengaluru Central Jail to the CID office on the night of September 24. The BJP legislator, however, has denied all the allegations, claiming they are false.

Karnataka Congress leader D.K. Suresh had alleged that Munirathna was trying to infect his adversaries with HIV and that the government should investigate the matter.

Powerful blasts rocked Beirut overnight in some of the heaviest Israeli strikes on the capital of Lebanon so far as the Lebanese Health Ministry reports dozens killed and over 150 wounded in bombing attacks across the country in the past 24 hours.

Israel launched several waves of airstrikes on Beirut’s southern neighborhood of Dahiyeh on Thursday.

The regime used powerful bunker-buster bombs in its latest attacks, whose number was more than a dozen.

Several civilian buildings were the main goals of the regime’s latest strikes.

Reports indicate that more bombs were used in the latest attacks compared to the strike that killed the leader of the Hezbollah resistance movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, last Friday.

The attacks also hit the vicinity of Beirut International Airport.

Israel’s strikes also targeted several other locations, including Hezbollah’s media relations office and a warehouse near the Beirut airport.

A source close to Hezbollah said Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes in south Beirut on Thursday night.

AFP correspondents in the Lebanese capital heard loud bangs that made car alarms go off and buildings shake.

"Israel struck the southern suburbs 11 consecutive times," the source said on the condition of anonymity.

Giant balls of flame rose from the targeted site with thick smoke billowing and flares shooting out.

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said that "more than 10 consecutive strikes have been recorded so far, in one of the strongest raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israeli war on Lebanon."

The strikes echoed to mountain regions outside Beirut, the NNA said.

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli army issued an “urgent warning” to the residents of the south Beirut area of Burj al-Barajneh to evacuate along with maps of the area.

“You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the [Israeli army] will operate in the near future,” its official Arabic language spokesperson posted on X.

The death toll from Israeli aerial assaults across Lebanon since early October 2023 has passed the 1,700 mark with nearly 8,770 injured, according to Lebanese government data.

In response, Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets and drones towards Israeli targets.

Hezbollah has been responding to the aggression with numerous retaliatory operations, including with hypersonic ballistic missiles, targeting the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Lebanese resistance movement has vowed to keep up its operations against Israel as long as the Israeli regime continues its Gaza war, which has so far killed more than 41,780 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The qualitative strikes of Hezbollah have so far thwarted any hostile "Israeli" advance into Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah said in a statement that at least 17 Israeli troops have been killed since the regime launched its incursion into southern Lebanon.

Since dawn on Thursday, the Lebanese resistance fighters have been repelling every attempt by the Israeli elite forces to advance on multiple fronts in southern Lebanon, inflicting heavy losses in equipment and personnel.

A Lebanese political analyst recently praised Hezbollah’s operational capabilities, warning that Israeli forces will become "sitting ducks" for the Lebanese resistance group should they attempt a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

The Israeli regime’s warplanes have conducted extensive airstrikes against towns and villages across Lebanon, killing at least 492 people.

Lebanon’s health ministry announced the death toll on Monday, saying the victims included 35 children and 58 women.

The ministry said at least 1,645 others had also been wounded in the attacks that targeted the areas earlier in the day.

Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad said that the health ministry is working to ensure those injured in Israeli strikes are getting the health care they need.

The health minister said he had asked hospitals to stop taking regular, light cases to make space for the wounded from the south.

“We working on directives for the first-aid centres to be turned into places that can receive the wounded. The displaced people who have cancer, kidney failure and other chronic diseases, we have the plan to continue their treatment in different medical centers,” he said.

The country’s media outlets said the aircraft had bombed all the towns and villages lying on the southern border as well as their surroundings.

Israeli warplanes also reportedly targeted eastern Lebanese areas, including the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek.

Lebanese sources said the airstrikes had targeted a total of more than 40 areas in Lebanon during the attacks.

The Sheikh of the Druze community reached out to the Deputy Head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council and expressed solidarity and reaffirmed support for the people of southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs, and the Bekaa during this critical period for the country.

The Commissioner of Marjayoun-Hassbaya in the Muslim Scouts, Sheikh Hussein Al-Nader, was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his home in the town of Dibbine, Marjayoun district, South Lebanon.

Three people were injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting the Deir El-Zahrani highway, in South Lebanon.

A family of four was killed in Hermel, Bekaa, due to the recent Israeli airstrikes.

Israeli media outlets, meanwhile, alleged that the attacks had hit locations lying as far as 125 kilometers (77 miles) inside the Lebanese territory.

Israeli military spokesman Danieh Hagari said the regime "will engage in [more] extensive and precise strikes” against Lebanon, adding that the attacks would "go on for the near future.”

The regime has markedly intensified its attacks against the country since October 7, when it launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has responded with numerous strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories as a means of both retaliating against the regime and displaying support for the war-hit Gazans.

On Sunday, the group staged its farthest-reaching strikes against the territories since October, firing scores of rockets against the Ramat David Airbase, 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the city of Haifa, and the Rafael weapons manufacturing facility in the Zevulun area north of the city.

It described the strike against the facility as its “initial response” to the regime’s detonation of thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkie radios that killed at least 39 people and wounded 3,000 others across Lebanon over Tuesday and Wednesday.

Also on Sunday, Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said the movement was in a "new phase" in its battle against the regime.

"Threats will not stop us... We are ready to face all military possibilities,” he noted.

Qassem made the remarks while attending the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, one of the group’s senior commanders.

Aqil had been martyred alongside 37 others, including three children and seven women, during an Israeli attack on a residential building in a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Friday.