Amid allegations of a “cover-up” of bitcoin scam, the city police issued a strong rebuttal on Saturday. Asserting that the investigation was conducted in a fair and transparent manner, they said allegations were being made based on “incomplete/distorted facts”.
Meeting with CM
The press statement came hours after AICC general secretary Randeep Surjewala held a press conference in New Delhi making allegations of a “cover-up”. City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant and Joint Commissioner (Crime) Sandeep Patil met Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday evening and hours later issued a four-page clarification, narrating the facts of the case from November 2020.
Responding to allegations of bitcoins in ‘hacker’ Sri Krishna’s wallet vanishing, the statement explained how the wallet was not his at all in the first place and hence no bitcoin was recovered or had vanished. The statement said Sri Krishna made several claims in his voluntary statement about high volume hacking of websites, without any specific details.
“Careful examination of digital evidence by cyber experts revealed a majority of them were unsubstantiated,” the statement said. Despite alerting the Interpol and the case gaining wide publicity neither any foreign agency nor any of the companies the accused claimed to have hacked had approached the city police, the statement said.
The police also claimed that they were in regular touch with the Enforcement Directorate and other central agencies through the probe and had also referred the case to them.
On drugs
Responding to questions raised by Priyank Kharge whether the accused was administered anxiety drugs in custody, the police said a medical report of the accused was negative for drugs. The police also said a petition disputing the time of arrest was dismissed by the High Court of Karnataka imposing costs.
