Bengaluru (PTI): Children of two former chief ministers will be in the contest for the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat, with BJP on Wednesday fielding its sitting MP and veteran BJP leader B S Yediyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra.

The Congress has named former Chief Minister late S Bangarappa's daughter Geetha Shivarajkumar, who is the wife of Karnataka film star Shivarajkumar and daughter-in-law of Kannada thespian late Rajkumar.

Raghavendra has been elected to Parliament from Shimoga three times. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and in the 2018 by-election, he defeated Geetha's brother Madhu Bangarappa, who is now the minister in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government. Madhu was then with JD(S).

Raghavendra, in his first Lok Sabha election in 2009, had defeated S Bangarappa.

Geetha had earlier contested from the seat on the JD(S) ticket in 2014 and lost against Yediyurappa by a huge margin. She had come third in that election behind Congress candidate Manjunath Bhandary.

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Bengaluru (PTI): A 46-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly blackmailing a woman using her explicit photos and videos to force her into a sexual relationship with him, police said on Saturday.

The accused, Haniyur Chandregowda, is a member of the Child Welfare Committee in Ramanagara, they said.

Obscene photos of several other women were also found on his mobile phone during examination, police said.

The case came to light after a 43-year-old woman, who works as a make-up artist, filed a complaint at the Rajarajeshwari Nagar police station on April 30, they said.

According to FIR, the woman met Chandregowda in 2021. He told her he was connected to TV serials and took her phone number on the pretext of offering make-up work. The woman had been living separately from her husband for about eight years.

The accused started visiting her house frequently and told her he was a lecturer with a good salary and promised to marry her and entered into a physical relationship with her, she alleged.

Police said Chandregowda later used private photos and videos of their intimate moments to threaten her. He allegedly warned that he would make them public if she did not agree to his demands, and continued the relationship under pressure.

The FIR also stated that in 2024, he rented a house using the woman's documents by falsely claiming to be her husband.

The woman also alleged that he used a fake ID claiming he was a Superintendent of Police to avoid paying toll fees.

She claimed that he had taken around Rs 5 lakh from her since 2021 and had not returned the money.

The FIR further stated that he added his name to the educational documents of the woman's daughter, pretending to be her husband.

Based on the complaint, a case under sections 69 (sexual intercourse by deceitful means) and 204 (impersonating a public servant) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was registered. He was later arrested, a senior police officer said.