A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is probing the Bitcoin scam in the state, has sought the rejection of an anticipatory bail plea filed by a former crime branch police officer in order to facilitate the recovery of two missing nano ledgers (or hardware crypto wallets) that were allegedly used to siphon Bitcoin found with a hacker.
The SIT, while seeking the rejection of an anticipatory bail plea filed by former crime branch police inspector Sridhar Poojar, told a special court on Friday that the investigating agency needs to find two of the three nano ledgers suspected to have been used to siphon Bitcoin that was found in the crypto wallets of Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, 29, a hacker.
Poojar, who is now a deputy superintendent of police, was the crime branch officer who had arrested Sriki in November 2020 in a case of procurement of drugs on the darknet using Bitcoin.The drugs case led to the revelation of the involvement of Sriki in multiple crimes, including the theft of Rs 11.5 crore from the state e-governance cell.
The police officer was named along with three other former crime branch officers and a private cyber expert in an
FIR alleging illegal confinement, breach of trust by a public servant and destruction of evidence filed on January 24 by the SIT over the handling of the 2020 drug case against Sriki and his associates.
The private cyber expert, K S Santhosh Kumar, who runs a firm called Group Cyber ID Technology Pvt Ltd, and former crime branch technical cell head of the rank of police inspector Prashanth Babu have been arrested by the SIT in the case.The other police inspectors accused in the case are Chandradhar S R and Lakshmikanthaiah.
The SIT has stated in court arguments in recent weeks that Bitcoins that were in the custody of Sriki were illegally taken by the police while the hacker was in police custody between November 2020 and January 2021.
The SIT has alleged that when the hacker was in custody, Kumar, who was roped in by the police for technical assistance, “obtained three nano ledgers or hardware crypto wallets from
Surat” and gave it to the police.
A large quantity of Bitcoins was transferred to these hardware wallets on January 16, 2021, from the Amazon Web Services cloud crypto wallets of Sriki, the SIT has said.
On Friday, the SIT told a special court that one of the hardware wallets had been recovered from the custody of the arrested police officer and that the location of two more were in the knowledge of Poojar.
A senior counsel appearing for Poojar argued that the January 24 FIR was brought by the SIT after the police officer obtained a stay order from the Karnataka High Court against taking “precipitative action” against the officer in an FIR for destruction of evidence that was filed by the SIT in September 2023.
The SIT told the special court on Friday that it had obtained a voluntary confession statement under Section 164 of the CrPC at a magistrate’s court from Sriki to strengthen its argument of the involvement of police officers in siphoning off Bitcoins from the hacker.
The SIT also presented statements and investigation details in a sealed cover to the court to emphasise its argument against grant of anticipatory bail to Poojar and bail to Babu and Kumar.
Earlier this month, the special court had granted anticipatory bail to the co-founders of a Bitcoin exchange in Karnataka who came under the SIT scanner for their association with those handling the crypto coins found in the possession of Sriki in 2020.
Karnataka Bitcoin scam case and how it was unearthed
Sriki and his accountant Robin Khandelwal were initially arrested by the CCB in November 2020 on charges of ordering drugs on the internet using Bitcoin.
The Karnataka Police’s handling of the cases involving Sriki under the
BJP regime in Karnataka after the arrests in November 2020 resulted in allegations of corruption by the Congress when it was in the Opposition between 2020 and 2023.
The Congress government constituted the CID SIT on June 30, 2023, soon after it came to power in May.
Sriki himself has said in police statements that are on record in chargesheets filed by the CCB that he was forced to handover all cryptocurrency in his possession to the police.
“I understood the case scenario that even if I do not give them the Bitcoins they can use forensic methods to find the Bitcoins after a talk with the investigating officer.So post consultations I voluntarily accepted (sic) to give away the Bitcoins which I had kept in various wallets in different cryptocurrencies,” reads a statement attributed to Sriki which is a part of the chargesheet in one of the cases filed against Sriki in 2021.
The Congress party has suggested that police and politicians collected bribes through crypto currency from Sriki and his associates to water down the cases during the BJP tenure.
At the time of the hacker’s arrest in 2020, the value of one Bitcoin was in the range of $25,000 (around Rs 20 lakh) which soared to as high as $60,000 (around Rs 50 lakh by April 2021).The Bitcoin scam has been estimated to be in the range of Rs 80 to Rs 200 crore.
Suhani Bhatnagar, who played young Babita Phogat in Dangal, passed away in Delhi, on Friday.She was hospitalised at AIIMS and passed away on February 16.Her co-star Aamir Khan’s production house paid their respects on social media and said, “you will always remain a star in our hearts.”.