Supreme Court stays Karnataka High Court order granting relief to police officer in Bitcoin scam probe | Bangalore News

In orders passed on May 24, a vacation bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Bela Trivedi and Justice Pankaj Mithal ordered a stay on the May 2 order of the Karnataka HC but has allowed Pujar to approach the court for formal bail by filing a separate plea.

The court issued notices to the deputy superintendent rank police officer and others following the plea and said “there shall be stay against the implementation of the impugned order”. “However, respondent No.1 shall be at liberty to file a separate application seeking anticipatory bail/bail before the concerned Court and if any such application is filed, the same shall be considered by the Court on its own merits, without being influenced by the impugned order passed by the High Court and/or earlier rejections of the application(s) filed by the respondent No.1,” the bench said on May 24.

Pujar was granted relief by the Karnataka High Court even though he did not seek anticipatory bail but asked for the quashing of two cases registered by the SIT, and the quashing of a proclamation order issued against him by a magistrate for evading investigations

“In a case filed under section 482 of the CrPC (quashing of FIRs) by the police officer, the honourable court has issued orders that fall under section 438 of the CrPC (anticipatory bail). This order has been challenged in the Supreme Court,” an SIT official said.

A special court for CID cases in Bengaluru rejected the bail plea of Pujar on February 23 by stating that the Bitcoin scam case involving police corruption in cases filed against an international hacker Srikrishna alias Sriki, 29, in 2020-21 seemed prima facie like instances of a fence eating the crop.

Subsequently, an FIR was registered against the officer for attacking SIT officials who attempted to apprehend him and a proclamation order was issued by a magistrate’s court against the officer for failing to participate in investigations.

Pujar approached the Karnataka High Court to quash the First Information Report registered by the SIT for alleged wrongdoing in the probe of the Bitcoin scam, the FIR for attacking investigating officials, and also for quashing the proclamation order issued by the magistrate’s court.

On May 2, the Karnataka High Court quashed the magistrate court’s proclamation order against Pujar in the Bitcoin scam case and asked the police officer to appear before the SIT on May 8 to “join the investigation and cooperate with the investigation process,” for a day. The bench also said the SIT could take him into judicial custody for a day on May 8 for investigation but ordered that the police officer should be released at the end of the day on the furnishing of a bond for Rs 2 lakh.

Pujar visited the SIT office on May 8 as directed but was told to return when called again on account of the investigating officer being unwell.

Pujar, who is a former Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB) inspector, and three of his former colleagues are among four police officers named by a CID SIT police unit in Karnataka, along with a cyber expert in an FIR alleging illegal confinement, breach of trust by a public servant, and destruction of evidence filed on January 24, 2024, in connection with the crime branch’s handling of cases following arrest of Srikrishna in November 2020.

Srikrishna, 29, was arrested again by the SIT on May 6 this year in connection with the theft of 60.6 Bitcoin valued at Rs 1.14 crore in 2017 from a cryptocurrency exchange in Tumkur, Karnataka.

The four former Crime Branch officers accused of wrongdoing in the cases filed in 2020 against the hacker are Pujar, inspectors Prashanth Babu, Chandradhar S R and Lakshmikanthaiah along with a private cyber expert K S Santhosh Kumar, who assisted the probe in the hacker’s case in 2020. Three officers and the private expert were arrested by the SIT.

The investigations in the case have found dozens of procedural lapses by the CCB in its probe against the hacker and his associates, including illegal detention, no documentation of the logins, passwords and data for the computer usage by the accused, and even the provision of a laptop worth Rs 60,000 by the police to Sriki to display his hacking skills in police custody.