Karnataka Govt Denies Prosecution Permission to 4 Cops in Bitcoin Scam Case

Bengaluru, July 10: The Karnataka government has let off four cops from the hook of Bitcoin scam, by denying permission to prosecute them.

After the Home Department denied the permission to prosecute DySP Shridhar K Pujar, D M Prashanth Babu, Lakshmikanthayya and Chandra Shekhar, the SIT, which had earlier arrested the four, dropped the charges against them in its charge sheet.

The SIT formed by the CID had investigated the case against Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki and the episode where he was illegally detained by City Crime Branch (CCB) police had illegally detained Sriki and coerced him to transfer Bitcoins worth several crores of rupees. Along with the four officers, cyber crime expert Santhosh Kumar was also arrested and later released on bail. The SIT had submitted three separate requests to the Home Department, seeking permission to prosecute the four officers, but all the three requests were rejected. While filing the charge sheet, the SIT has dropped the names of the four police officers and filed a charge sheet against only Santhosh Kumar, who is the owner of GCID Technologies..

According to the charge sheet, the SIT found evidence, including witness statements and technical material, indicating that the four police officers had allegedly acted in collusion with Santhosh Kumar in an attempt to transfer Bitcoins from the hacker Sriki.

The charge sheet alleges that Santhosh Kumar misused the cryptocurrency wallets of hacker Sriki and Robin Khandelwala. Santhosh Kumar illegally transferred Bitcoins worth crores of rupees from Rabin Khandelwala's wallet.