BENGALURU: The Cubbon Park police on Friday arrested a woman in connection with the Rs 70-crore swindling case related to the Manipal Group. Balambal Shankaran, a resident of Chennai and accused number seven in the case, is the arrested woman. She has been accused of investing Rs. 2.54 crore in shares and commodities, using the siphoned-off money.
The police said Balambal, who has an MBA in Finance, was arrested after her anticipatory bail petition was dismissed by a city sessions court on June 26. “She was arrested from Chennai on Saturday and will be produced before the magistrate,” the police said.
She has been accused of conniving with Sandeep Gururaj, the former DGM (Finance) of the Manipal Group and main accused in the case, and trading in the market for over Rs 2.54 crore. She had earlier evaded arrest by approaching the Madras High Court, which had granted an interstate transit bail for four weeks.
Later, she had moved an anticipatory bail plea in a city court but the prosecution had argued that she was not cooperating with the investigation, and thus her petition should be rejected. Based on material produced before it, the court rejected her petition on June 26, which led to her arrest.
“It was learnt during investigation that she (Balambal) worked as a conduit to move the ill-gotten money of Sandeep Gururaj. It is suspected that he might have tampered with electronic evidence and it is being investigated. Also, it is learnt that Sandeep and Balambal’s family members had partied together at luxury resorts. The probe established that the duo had met in August 2018 and also a few days before Sandeep’s arrest. They had political links and tried to build pressure on investigating officers by using their influence,” a source said.
“Knowing that police had strong evidence against her, she approached the courts to get anticipatory bail but it did not work as we had submitted all evidence against her,” the source added.