The story of a whistleblower senior IAS officer Rashmi V who was allegedly attacked by former contract employees of the Administrative Training Institute (ATI), at Mysore recently reveals a much deeper conspiracy than one can expect. Rashmi, a 1996 Karnataka cadre IAS officer and Director-General of the Administrative Training Institute (ATI), who was recently posted to ATI has found over Rs100 crore irregularities in the institute and has written three letters to the Karnataka Government which is yet to act on it.

Rashmi was allegedly slapped, hit with slippers and manhandled on the ATI premises by a group of protesters, who were accusing her of harassing mess supervisor Venkatesh (53) whose body was found in the water tank earlier in the day.

The protesters also waylaid Rashmi’s official car and raised slogans against her. The police had to rush to the spot and escort her to safety in a police vehicle. Venkatesh’s relatives, including his wife, accused Rashmi of harassing her husband in her fight with the former Director-General of ATI Amita Prasad.

The incident occurred in Mysore, the home town of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, where many in the administration feel it was her letters on the alleged Rs100 crore misappropriation by the previous Director General that triggered the unrest.

Even though the Mysore police has arrested 19 people based on the television footage on Thursday, there are many unanswered questions in the entire episode about the alleged misappropriation of Rs100 crore in the ATI. Rashmi, Regional Commissioner in Mysore and deputed to ATI as the Director General has been an upright officer and questioned the money spent on various heads by the previous DG has churning the Karnataka bureaucracy.

Rashmi took on her own predecessor another senior IAS officer Amita Prasad who was heading ATI till she took over. Amita Prasad is wife of Ashit Mohan Prasad, an additional director general (Intelligence), of police who is said to be the eyes and ears of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

Rashmi, who started her career as an Assistant Commissioner, Hassan, in 1996, has had several run-ins with those occupying powerful posts, but her latest complaint against Amita Prasad and how she was targeted a day after the couple formally vacated the official quarters of Director General, Administrative Training Institute (ATI), Mysore, could open a can of worms as she has sought a probe by either the lokayukta or the CBI on grounds that her predecessor's actions “caused loss of public funds to the institute and gains to several private entities.”

Releasing a copy of a letter she had written to Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee, Rashmi said in a press conference in Mysore : “I cannot understand the Government's reluctance to order a probe into the scam, which is to the tune of Rs100 crore. But the same Government acts with alacrity when a panchayat development officer is accused of misusing Rs25,000 under MNREGA, and suspends him”.

“Being honest and committed to public service need not endanger anyone's life and dignity. But Wednesday's incident makes me doubt that,'' she said. However the State Government has appointed a senior IAS officer to probe the entire episode.