A senior IPS officer in Karnataka, who appeared before a Special Investigation Team last week in connection with a probe into a Bitcoin scam, has moved a court for an ex parte interim order to prohibit defamatory reporting by the media on his role in the case.
Sandeep Patil, Inspector General of Police, who headed the Bengaluru police Central Crime Branch between 2020 and 2021, has sought an ex parte injunction against defamatory reporting by media outlets in a CCB case that is being probed again by the SIT.
The civil court posted the plea by the IPS officer for orders on Tuesday.
Patil had appeared before the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department SIT last week to provide clarifications on a probe against hacker Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, who was arrested by the Crime Branch under his watch in 2020-21 in connection with multiple hacking crimes.
The SIT spoke to the IPS officer after it named four former CCB officers in an FIR filed on January 24, 2024, for alleged illegal confinement, breach of trust by a public servant, and destruction of evidence in connection with the crime branch’s handling of cases after Sriki’s arrest in November 2020.
In its FIR, the SIT has named K Sridhar Poojar (now a deputy superintendent of police), inspectors Prashanth Babu, Chandradhar S R and Lakshmikanthaiah along with a private cyber expert K S Santhosh Kumar who assisted in the probe of the hacker’s case in 2020.
The SIT has arrested Prashanth Babu and Santhosh Kumar. The two were granted bail on February 23 after they cooperated with the probe. The SIT is seeking the custodial interrogation of Poojar whose anticipatory bail was denied by a special court on February 23. Poojar was the original investigating officer when Sriki was arrested by the Crime Branch in a case of buying drugs on the darknet.
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On February 23, a special court indicated while rejecting Poojar’s anticipatory bail that the SIT had unearthed prima facie evidence to suggest wrongdoing by the Crime Branch officers following the arrest of the hacker.
The SIT has accused the Crime Branch officers of holding the hacker and his associate in illegal custody before showing their official arrests in November 2020.
Sriki’s arrest led to the cracking of several cyber crimes in Karnataka, including a Rs 11.5 crore heist from the Karnataka e-governance cell in July-August 2019.
After it came to power, the Congress government constituted the CID SIT on June 30, 2023, to probe the Bitcoin scam.
