The 45-year-old Lingayat seer in Karnataka who committed suicide on Monday fell into a “honeytrap and was being blackmailed over obscene video calls” with a woman, police disclosed today.

“The intimate moments of the woman and the seer were recorded by the woman using her mobile phone’s screen-recording function,” sources said.

“There are four videos doing the rounds. These videos are of obscene nature. We are investigating who the woman is,” a police official.

“An unknown woman has done this to me,” reads a line in the suicide note, according to a senior police officer.

The seer, Basavalinga Swami, was found hanging from his prayer room’s window grille at Kanchugal Bande Mutt in Karnataka’s Ramanagara district on Monday morning. His suicide note mentioned blackmail and harassment by “some people who wanted to remove him from his position.”.

“The woman and a few others threatened the seer that they would release four obscene videos and we have clues about the suspects.”

The embarrassing incident has happened within a fortnight of a rape case being registered against another prominent Lingayat seer,  Shivamurthy Sharanaru of Muruga Mutt in Chitradurga, after four minor girls alleged that they were sexually assaulted by him for years.

The Lingayat sect, which has a number of centres in Karnataka and some neighbouring states, constitutes 17 per cent of the state’s population, giving it considerable political clout.

The sect was founded in the 12th century by social reformer Basaveshwara, who has a huge following in neighbouring Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as well.