On Wednesday, Ramesh Gowda, the driver of the Karnataka land acquisition officer Bheema Nayak allegedly killed himself after being harassed over knowledge of black money dealings.
Ramesh’s friends are in shock to hear about his death. Ramesh, they said, had kept almost all the details he revealed in his suicide note to himself.
While some media reports said that Ramesh had told his friends about threats to his life, his close friend Shashi told TNM that this was not so.
“He never told any of us except for his brother about the threat to his life,” said Shashi.
Shashi said that he had met Ramesh on Monday night, and they had dinner together, after which Shashi dropped him off at Samrudha Lodge and went home. “That night he told me that he had quit his job as his employer had broken his trust and cheated him. He also told me that he had found another job, which he would join after three days,” Shashi said.
On Tuesday morning, Shashi said, he had made a phone call to Ramesh.
“He was incoherent. I could not understand what he was saying so I went to the lodge where he was staying. I knocked on the door several times, but he did not open the door,” Shashi said.
Shashi later contacted the manager of the lodge and asked him about Shashi’s whereabouts. The manager told Shashi that Ramesh had been inebriated the previous night, and was probably asleep.
“I went back to the lodge after an hour and knocked on the door again. He still did not open the door. Then I called his brother to ask him if anything was wrong. I also informed him that Ramesh was not picking up my calls and not opening the door to the lodge,” Shashi said.
A few hours later, Shashi said, Ramesh’s brother Manjunath arrived in Maddur. He and Shashi then went to the lodge and knocked on the door again. When he did not open, they asked the manager if they could break open the door since they were worried about him.
“The manager told us to talk to the police first and so we filed a complaint at the Maddur Police Station. The police then came and broke open the door. That’s when we found him dead,” Shashi told TNM
Shashi described Ramesh as being a private person, despite being his best friend. “I don’t know exactly when he started working for Bheema Nayak. He told me about it only a year ago when we met for his brother’s wedding. He was working as the driver of Ashwath Nayak of the Mysore Sugar Company Ltd before. I don’t know when he quit the job and for how long Ramesh worked for Bheema Nayak,” he added.
Shashidhara, a resident of Karakotanahalli and another friend of Ramesh, said that Ramesh had met him last Thursday.
“He seemed really depressed and he had told me that he quit his job. When I asked him to stay over instead of going to the Maddur lodge, he said he had a meeting with Bheema Nayak regarding something important. No one expected him to take such a drastic step. If he had told us about it, we could have helped him. He should not have kept this huge a matter to himself,” Shashidhara said.
According to the Mandya SP and Ramesh’s friend Shashi, Ramesh had told his brother about Bheema Nayak threatening his life over Rs 8 lakh that had gone missing while allegedly being laundered through Ramesh’s account.
However, Ramesh’s uncle, Mahendra said that Ramesh had not revealed these details even to his family when he last visited them on Sunday for a wedding.
“He would always be very happy whenever he came home. This time when he visited, he looked very stressed. He did not talk to people much and kept to himself when he is usually the one who makes conversation with people. We all tried many times to ask him what was bothering him. He only told us that he was stressed because he had trouble with his employer. He also said that he should never have quit his previous job,” he added.