Ravishankar: The employee who earned Rs 30K/month and paid salary of Rs 1.5 lakhs

Bengaluru: BK Ravishankar, the man in the limelight presently because of his name cropping up in the Sandalwood drugs racket case, has the official identity as a Grade II employee in the Transport Department with a salary in the range of Rs 30,000 to 35,000.

However, he had an illicit identity which he covered by way of unofficially hiring three employees costing him Rs 1.5 lakhs to do his official work along with paying almost Rs 50,000 to an autorickshaw to travel around the city.

Additionally, he owned a pub in the city and was inviting celebrities for the Road Safety Week organised by the Transport Department.

Ravishankar got his job after the death of his Regional Transport Officer father. With the job came perks such as extensive links with almost all economic and commercial sections of the city.

The silence of his superiors about him hiring three others to do his work till he was arrested has made many suspicious that he might have been paying a ‘share’ from his secret drugs business to them as well.

According to sources from within the Transport Department, Ravishankar made sure that he was never transferred out of the Vijayanagar Regional Transport Office.

Once when he was caught red-handed in a Departmental case, he was transferred to Ballari. But as elections came around he applied for the election duty and after three months when the situation had cooled, used his influence transferred to Jayanagara, according to the same sources.