Four Indian police officers under investigation for tampering with seized digital assets

Four Indian police officers are now under investigation for tampering with digital assets and locked up in evidence. According to police sources, the four officers attached to the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB) are now being investigated by the police after the Karnataka government granted the sanction.

According to reports, the evidence the former Indian police officers tampered with were proceeds of criminal activities seized from international hacker, Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, after he was arrested in 2020. According to the sources, A Special Investigation Team (SIT) from the Karnataka Police Criminal Investigation Department was appointed to look into the Bitcoin scam tied to the hacker.

The sanction was approved under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, with the group arresting Sridhar Pujar, a current deputy superintendent of police, and police inspectors Prashanth Babu, Chandradhar S R, and Lakshmikanthaiah, in connection to the crime in 2024. The sources mentioned that the SIT had gathered evidence that police officers tampered with the devices seized from Sriki and his associate, Robin Khandelwal, by employing the services of private cyber experts. The group was also looking into corruption in the case.

Indian police officers under scrutiny for evidence tampering

According to the police source, there has been a movement of Bitcoin, which has caused suspicion and a need for investigation. “There has been a transfer of Bitcoin from one of the accused to a technical expert. There is also the question of the claim of the disappearance of cryptocurrency held by the hacker after he was arrested and taken into police custody (in 2020). These are being investigated as acts of corruption by the police officials,” the source said.

The police source highlighted that once the investigation is complete, the SIT will need additional sanctions under Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act to file a charge sheet against the officers. They will also need one under the Karnataka Police Act and Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code to proceed.

According to the SIT, their probe found that a cyber expert brought in to assist with the investigations by the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB) into the illegal activities of Sriki in 2020 illegally accessed a crypto wallet of the hacker’s accountant, moving Bitcoin worth over $2,000 into his crypto wallet.

During the investigation, the SIT fingered five people, including cyber expert K S Santhosh Kumar who owns a private firm called Group Cyber ID Technology Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru, and the four Indian police officers, in its FIR, alleging illegal concealment, breach of trust by a public servant, and destruction of evidence filed in the Cyber Crime Police station of the CID in January 2024.

SIT’s investigations unravel illegalities

The details of the investigation revealed there were numerous procedural lapses by the Indian police, including illegal detention, and lack of documentation of the logins, passwords, and data for computer usage by the accused. The Indian police officers were also accused of providing a laptop worth Rs. 60,000 (about $700) to the accused to facilitate hacking.

In the statements documented by the Indian police in earlier charge sheets filed by the CCB, Sriki mentioned that he had about 400 to 500 Bitcoins in his possession when he was apprehended by the authorities. The CCB is yet to recover any of the Bitcoin allegedly acquired illegally by the hacker. According to investigations conducted by SIT, in January 2021, under the instructions of Babu, the cyber expert Kumar gained access to the crypto wallets, email accounts, and bank accounts of Sriki and Khandelwal and changed their logins and passwords in the absence of court orders or witnesses.

In its FIR, the SIT also mentioned that Babu provided a laptop worth $690 to Sriki, where the hacker accessed his account on Amazon Web Services, but none of the data he accessed was collected for evidence by the officers. The same police officers who were part of the CCB Bengaluru police from 2020 to 2021 were also accused in September 2023, with the FIR showing that they tampered with two laptops in evidence after they were seized by Sriki.

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