BENGALURU: Five police officers, including two from the IPS cadre, have landed in trouble with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registering an FIR against them in the I Monetary Advisory (IMA) multi-crore scam. The State Government had recently sanctioned the prosecution of Inspector General of Police Hemant Nimbalkar, Superintendent of Police Ajay Hilori and three other officers stating that prima facie, it appeared that they were involved in the scam.
The CBI’s FIR, filed before the CBI special court in Bengaluru, names nine people and invokes sections pertaining to criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The FIR states that the five police officers failed to take any action against the firm even though the Reseve Bank of India (RBI) had rejected their enquiry reports and asked them to re-look into the matter.
‘Accused tried to protect interests of IMA boss’
The police officers named in the FIR are M Ramesh, then inspector of Commercial Street police station, then DCP (East) Ajay Hilori, sub-inspector of Commercial Street station Gowri Shankar, then DySP of the CID, E B Sridhara, and Hemant Nimbalkar, who was IGP, CID. IMA directors Mohammed Mansoor Khan, Nizamuddin, Waseem and Arshad Khan are also named.
“It was learnt that the reluctance on the part of these public servants to take action against Mohammed Mansoor Khan, proprietor of IMA and other group entities, and its directors, was due to the fact that they had received illegal gratification as a motive or reward for forbearing to do official act of taking action against IMA and obtained valuable things without consideration from IMA MD & CEO Khan and its entities.
In furtherance of their motive to favour the IMA group of entities, these public servants conspired with them and conducted improper enquiry on IMA group entities at various stages and submitted faulty enquiry reports to the government/concerned authorities recommending therein no action against the IMA group of entities and its directors by misusing their official positions,” the FIR stated.
“The acts of the accused public servants disclosed that there was a concerted effort on their part to protect the interests of Khan, instead of protecting the interests of investors and depositors. Accordingly, they submitted improper enquiry reports and recommended no action against Khan and IMA group of entities and, as a quid-pro-quo, accepted bribes/received valuable things and availed undue advantage from IMA,” the FIR stated.