BENAGLURU, 25 JAN

Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the Bitcoin scam that came to light during the previous BJP government has arrested a police inspector and a private cyber expert. The cop was previously attached to Central Crime Branch (CCB).

Police said Prashanth Babu was a former police inspector of Central Crime Branch (CCB), and he is currently posted at the City police commissioner’s office. The other accused is Santhosh Kumar KS, who runs a private firm and is cyber expert.

Babu is allegedly the technical expert while the private cyber expert is one of the witnesses for the seizure of 31 Bitcoins from Sriki in January 2021.

The development is likely to take a political twist ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, as the involvement of prominent politicians in the State is suspected in the scam.

The accused were arrested on charges of destroying the evidence regarding the scam. The SIT sleuths had called five people for interrogation on Wednesday and were likely to take all into custody.

The SIT team had summoned three deputy superintendent-rank police officers for questioning. The team had also summoned alleged kingpin Sriki for questioning.

The SIT under the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was formed in September 2023. Home Minister Dr G Parameshwara had then said, "We had discussed about lakhs of crores of rupees being siphoned off during the previous BJP government. Now, we have ordered a reinvestigation."

The bitcoin scandal had taken place after CCB police arrested the alleged international hacker Srikrishna aka Sriki in Bengaluru in 2020 on the charge of selling drugs. It was alleged that using the accused hacker, the ruling BJP leaders had minted huge money by "allowing" him to commit the scandal in custody in 2020.

The probe revealed that the accused had siphoned off Rs 11 crore by hacking into online gaming companies and government web portals. The accused had allegedly converted the money into bitcoins and carried out drug peddling in Bengaluru.

As the scandal came out, Karnataka In-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala had attacked BJP central leadership as well as former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai over the scandal.