BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court refused to quash 11 separate crimes registered at various police stations against three accused, including a couple from Mangaluru, for allegedly cheating crores of rupees from people residing in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kerala, in the guise of facilitating borrowing of funds.
According to the order, they have a common modus operandi. They trace and track persons who need funds and assure them they will resolve their problem and get money transferred into their accounts. Each is a bogus company, as alleged in the complaints.
The accused are Roshan Saldanha, his wife Dafney Neethu D’Souza from Dakshina Kannada district, and N Chandrashekhar from Chitradurga.
“The matter is still at the stage of crime. The accused are before this court, calling in question the crimes registered on the offences invoked and criminal law being set into motion for recovery of money. It is a too well-settled principle of law that the FIR is not of offence, what is alleged is to be investigated, and investigation must ensue,” said Justice M Nagaprasanna, dismissing the petitions filed by the accused.
They moved the high court, questioning the legality of crimes registered by Siddharth Mohan from Uttar Pradesh, Jaikar Reddy Vedire, Ajaya Naidu from Hyderabad, Rajiv Sharma, Naveenchandra Patel from Mumbai, Nandini, Manjunath R, Tilak Dath Chowdri G from Bengaluru, Krishnamurthy YN from Andhra Pradesh, Ajaikumar K from Kerala, and Shiva Krishnamurthy Iyer from Maharashtra, with CEN Crime police station and others.
“The accused are said to have hoodwinked several people after luring them into respective transactions. Therefore, there can be no question of interdicting the investigation in such cases.
The projection of the senior counsel is that it is purely a civil transaction, and there is no nexus between the amounts deposited into the accounts to which the petitioners, who are the accused, have no nexus, are all matters of investigation as it is not one case or one complainant; there are 11 complaints by different complainants against the same accused,” the court observed.