Bitcoin-drugs case: Bengaluru police file chargesheet against 11
Over a year after it unearthed a racket involved in the purchase of drugs from the dark net using Bitcoin, the Bengaluru crime branch police have filed a chargesheet against 11 persons, including the son of a former Congress MLA, a police constable and an international hacker Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985.
The case involving the purchase of drugs through the dark net, unearthed by the crime branch in November 2020, eventually led to the cracking of several cybercrimes in Karnataka involving Srikrishna Ramesh (26), including a Rs 11.5 crore heist from the Karnataka e-governance cell in July-August 2019.
The drug case emerged on November 4, 2020, when law student Sujay M, who was part of a group involved in procuring drugs through the internet, was arrested at the foreign post office in south Bengaluru’s Chamarajpet when he turned up to collect an international parcel of 500 grams of hydro ganja.
Sujay’s arrest led the crime branch police to his associates Sunish Hegde, Hemanth Mudappa and Prasidh Shetty who fled to Goa and were sheltered at a resort by Darshan Kumar Lamani, the son of Rudrappa Lamani, former Congress MLA from Haveri.
The former MLA’s son has also been named among the 11 accused in the chargesheet filed by the Bengaluru crime branch police on February 11 in a sessions court – in the case registered at the Kempegowda Nagar police station in November 2020 (after the arrest of Sujay).
Among the others named in the case is Prabhakar A J, a police head constable in Bengaluru who allegedly provided information to members of the gang on the whereabouts of a police tracking team while they were on the run following the initial arrests.
Still others named include Mohan Barki, Pankaj Kothari and Ashis Bheemsen – who were part of the group involved in procuring drugs on the dark net.
The hacker Srikrishna and his accountant Robin Khandelwal have been named in the case for ordering drugs on the internet and carrying out payments for the purchases. Srikrishna is accused of transferring funds to Khandelwal, who ran a Bitcoin trading service, in order to purchase the drugs on the dark net.
The 11 accused in the drugs case have been charged under sections of the NDPS Act pertaining to dealing with drugs that are lesser than commercial quantity, but larger than a small quantity, and for external dealings to bring the drugs into India from a foreign country.
Following the arrests, the Bengaluru police found that Srikrishna and some of his associates in the crime – Sunish Hegde, Mudappa, Prasidh Shetty – were involved in multiple other crimes in Bengaluru.
The hacker told the police that he was involved in stealing from international sites, including virtual crypto exchanges like the Bitfinex exchange where 1,19,754 bitcoins were stolen in August 2016 in one of the biggest online cryptocurrency thefts in the world.
Srikrishna was also found to have been involved in a 2019 hacking at the Karnataka government’s e-procurement unit of the e-governance cell, where Rs 11.5 crore of earnest money deposits by bidders for tenders were stolen, and in the hacking of several poker gaming sites.
The children of several politicians, cutting across party lines, in Karnataka are known to have associated with Srikrishna. According to court records, Srikrishna was often housed in five-star hotels by his affluent associates to carry out his hacking activities.
While Srikrishna was first named in a criminal case in February 2018, as an associate of Mohammed Haris (the son of the Bengaluru Congress MLA N A Haris and current Karnataka Youth Congress president) for attacking a youth at a pub in Bengaluru, his role as a hacker emerged only after his arrest in the November 2020 bitcoin-drugs case.
The handling of cases involving the hacker by the police under the BJP regime in Karnataka since the arrests in November 2020 has led to allegations of corruption by the Opposition Congress. The party has alleged that the gang used cryptocurrency to bribe top officials
to get out of the cases.
“There is information about the involvement of influential politicians of Karnataka in the drugs & Bitcoin scam. It is concerning that the investigating officers are trying to close the case to help those politicians,” former Congress CM Siddaramaiah had said on social media in October 2021 in an apparent reference to the crimes allegedly committed by Srikrishna and his associates.
