BENGALURU: A special court dealing with corruption cases has expressed utter shock at Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID’s) “namesake” and “skeletal” investigation as a “formality” into a high profile case in which money from a liquidated company was alleged to have been illegally transferred to accounts of shell companies to benefit the accused.
The case was registered by High Grounds Police in 2016 against the accused based on a complaint lodged by Suresh Gowda, the then Deputy Registrar of the Cooperative Societies. The state government had transferred the case to the CID, which charge-sheeted eight accused.
Earlier, the state government on February 22, 2014, had appointed Sathish Kashyap, then the Additional Registrar of the Cooperative Societies, as the Official Liquidator for Simpson Group of Companies and its Employees Wholesale Credit Cooperative Society, Bengaluru. During his tenure as the Liquidator between February 22, 2014 and the date of his suspension on August 24, 2016, Kashyap is alleged to have illegally transferred Rs 5.41 crore between 2014-15 and Rs 4.18 crore between 2015-16 from the account of Simpson Company’s society at the Apex Bank, Shivajinagar Branch, on different dates to the accounts standing in the names of the second and third accused shell companies, for himself, his family members, friends and others.
On September 30, the special court judge KM Radhakrishna was hearing a plea filed by the five of the eight accused – Sathish J Kashyap, former Additional Commissioner of Cooperative Societies, NR Associates, its partner R Naresh Rao, and Sathish Kashyap’s son, Vignesh Shashar, and Kashyap’s wife, Anitha, who were charge-sheeted for various offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. They sought discharge from the charges of illegally transferring the money.
The special court observed that CID had failed to unearth the nexus of the accused and that no steps were taken to recover or seize the illegally transferred money diverted from the liquidated firm despite the investigations revealing the transfers.
Judge Radhakrishna, while rejecting the applications filed by five accused persons, marked a copy of the court’s order to the Director General of Police, CID (Special Units and Economic Offences), for further investigations in the light of the observations made in the order, and submit an additional final report within 60 days. “No need to say that, the incomplete, namesake and the skeletal investigations of this nature, for the purpose of formality in high-profile and serious economic offences cases by the specially designated agencies like the CID, get started to bury the truth of an offence. That apart, this type of investigation at the cost of the huge public money, manpower and the valuable time would help the real culprits to escape from their criminal liabilities rather than serving the true purpose of its (CID) very existence”, the court observed.
Terming CID’s act as most unfortunate, Judge Radhakrishna said no reasons were assigned by the investigating agency for its difficulty in recovering the amount throughout the investigation and even thereafter, although aware of the channels through which the amount in question was routed.