Karntaka: Political slugfest over Bitcoin case escalates | Latest News India

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The Con­gress on Wednes­day alleged that the BJP was pro­tect­ing the hack­er involved in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy case. 

Talk­ing to the media, Con­gress leg­is­la­tor and for­mer infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy min­is­ter Priyank Kharge alleged that the BJP gov­ern­ment had tak­en thou­sands of crores kick­backs in the Bit­coin scan­dal involv­ing hack­er Srikr­ish­na alias Sriki. 

“This gov­ern­ment is very sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly try­ing to cov­er up the bit­coin scam. All the BJP senior lead­er­ship is involved, their chil­dren are involved as well as senior offi­cials. This is a scan­dal of thou­sands of crores. They have got kick­backs from drugs, trans­fers, invest­ments, and even bribes through this method,” Priyank Kharge told reporters. 

He went on to add that hack­er Srikr­ish­na was impor­tant for the BJP since he was key to the scan­dal. “Sri­ki is BJP’s prized pos­ses­sion. Like the Hin­di say­ing that raja ki jaan thothe mein hai, he (Sri­ki) is their thotha (The King’s heart is in the par­rot, Sri­ki is their par­rot),” said Kharge.

Srikr­ish­na was arrest­ed by the Cen­tral Crime Branch (CCB) police on Novem­ber 18, 2020, in a drug ped­dling case. He had bought drugs from inter­na­tion­al deal­ers using bit­coins on the dark web. In the inter­ro­ga­tion that fol­lowed, CCB found that the soft­ware engi­neer was also involved in a series of online crimes. 

He hacked into web­sites to steal their data and locked the own­ers out of it. He would then demand pay­ment in bit­coins to unlock the web­sites. He also con­fessed to cre­at­ing ‘mir­ror’ sites, or fake pay­ment por­tals that mim­ic­ked real ones, to steal cred­it or deb­it card infor­ma­tion to steal mon­ey. He con­fessed to steal­ing 11.5 crore from the e‑procurement cell of the Kar­nata­ka e‑governance cen­tre, apart from hack­ing into some Bit­coin exchanges. 

Kharge asked the gov­ern­ment to make the let­ter writ­ten by chief min­is­ter Basavaraj Bom­mai to the Enforce­ment Direc­torate (ED) on the issue pub­lic. “Bit­coin, cryp­tocur­ren­cy, there will be a dig­i­tal foot­print. It is dif­fi­cult to trace but not impos­si­ble,” he added. 

Leader of the Oppo­si­tion Sid­dara­ma­iah too joined the attack. On Wednes­day the vet­er­an Con­gress leader tweet­ed: “Bit­coin, who­ev­er is involved, whether it is Con­gress, BJP or JD(S), we have to book them. Let them share their names. I nev­er say any­thing with­out evi­dence,” Sid­dara­ma­iah said. 

“We are not try­ing to black­mail any­one. I am get­ting sus­pi­cious of the way Basavaraj Bom­mai is talk­ing. He is talk­ing like he is involved. I nev­er alleged that Basavaraj Bom­mai is involved,” he added. 

Respond­ing to the alle­ga­tion, chief min­is­ter Bom­mai said that the Con­gress lead­ers were com­ment­ing with­out any knowl­edge of the case. “Ask poor Priyank Kharge to get full infor­ma­tion first and then talk. There are names of Con­gress lead­ers and he should wor­ry about that,” Bom­mai said on Wednesday. 

Bom­mai said that Sri­ki was first arrest­ed in 2018 when Con­gress was in pow­er. “Please remem­ber who was in pow­er at the time (Con­gress). The case was reg­is­tered in Cub­bon park sta­tion and five to six arrests were made. But Sri­ki was giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty for antic­i­pa­to­ry bail. Even after that, he could have been probed. He was involved in a brawl recent­ly and he could have been brought in for ques­tion­ing…. in 2020, we (the BJP gov­ern­ment) start­ed a war on drugs and he (Sri­ki) was caught that try­ing to buy drugs from the dark web in oth­er coun­tries and sell­ing it here,” he added. 

Mean­while, a court in Ben­galu­ru on Wednes­day grant­ed con­di­tion­al bail to alleged hack­er Sri­ki alias Srikr­ish­na in a case relat­ed to a hotel brawl. Srikr­ish­na who was grant­ed bail in the hack­ing cas­es ear­li­er this year was arrest­ed again by Ben­galu­ru police on Sun­day after he got into an argu­ment with the staff of a five star hotel in Ben­galu­ru. Lat­er police found that the hack­er was under the influ­ence of drugs and he was tak­en into cus­tody. He was fined 4,500 for con­sum­ing drugs and was released on con­di­tion­al bail with 25,000 as surety. 

Srikr­ish­na refused to com­ment on the case. “I have noth­ing to say, man. Please stop. There is noth­ing to say about this. This is just nui­sance and bogus,” he told reporters in Bengaluru. 

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