New Delhi: Being over a year of the disclosure of a racket that involved purchasing drugs from the darknet using Bitcoins, the Bengaluru crime branch police filed a charge sheet against 11 accused. Among them includes 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 crime branch unearthed the case involving the purchase of drugs through the dark web in November 2020. Slowly, they cracked several cybercrimes in Karnataka involving Srikrishna Ramesh (26) and a heist of Rs 11.5 crore from the Karnataka e-governance cell in July-August 2019.
The case caught the limelight on November 4, 2020, when Sujay M, a law student involved in purchasing drugs from the dark web was arrested at the foreign post office in south Bengaluru’s Chamarajpet, as he went on to collect an international parcel of 500 gms of hydro ganja.
The arrest of Sujay M enabled the crime branch to get hold of other associates involving Sunish Hegde, Hemanth Mudappa, and Prasidh Shetty who fled to Goa and settled at a resort by Darshan Kumar Lamani, the son of Rudrappa Lamani who is a former Congress MLA from Haveri.
The charge sheet filed by the Bengaluru crime branch on February 11 in a court session mentioned the name of the former MLA’s son among the 11 accused. The case was registered at the Kempegowda Nagar police station in November 2020.
Among them, a police head constable named Prabhakar A J was involved in the case as he allegedly provided information to the gang about the tracking done by police as they were on the run following the initial arrests. Others include Mohan Barki, Pankaj Kothari and Ashis Bheemsen also procured drugs through the dark web.
Srikrishna and Robin Khandelwal, the hacker and his accountant respectively have been named in the case for ordering drugs and carrying out payments for the purchases. Srikrishna has been accused of transferring funds to Khandelwal, who ran a Bitcoin trading service for purchasing drugs on the dark web.
The 11 accused have been named in the charge sheet under sections of the NDPS Act for dealing with drugs lesser than commercial quantity but higher than a small quantity and for extra dealings to bring drugs to India from a foreign land.
After the arrest, it was found that Srikrishna and his associates such as Sunish Hegde, Mudappa, Prasidh Shetty were involved in other crimes in Bengaluru.
Srikrishna told the police that he stole from international sites including virtual crypto exchanges like the Bitfinex exchange where 1,19,754 bitcoins were stolen in August 2016 that registered to be the biggest online cryptocurrency thefts in the world. Also, he was involved in hacking the Karnataka government’s e-procurement unit of the e-governance cell where Rs 11.5 crore deposited by bidders were stolen. He also hacked several poker gaming sites.
Meanwhile, since the case has been unearthed during the BJP regime in Karnataka, several allegations have been made against the Opposition Congress. The party has alleged that the gang used crypto to bride the top officials to escape the case.
“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 said on social media in October 2021 in a reference to the crime committed by Srikrishna and his associates.
