An eight-year-old case of suspicious fixed deposit creation by the then chief executive officer (CEO) of the Karnataka State Board of Auqaf has resurfaced now.
Mir Ahmed Abbas, the board’s chief accountant, lodged a police complaint on July 6, on behalf of the current CEO. Police have opened a case under IPC Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust by a public servant or by a banker, merchant or agent).
The complaint accuses S M Zulfiquar Ulla, CEO from 2015 to 2018, of causing the board a loss of Rs 8 crore. According to Abbas, Zulfiquar used two cheques totalling to Rs 4 crore from the board’s savings account at Indian Bank in Benson Town, Bengaluru, to open a fixed deposit at Vijaya Bank (now merged with Bank of Baroda) in Chintamani in 2016 without bringing it to the attention of the board.
According to the complainant, the amount used for creating the fixed deposit was the compensation received from the government for acquiring wakf land in Kalaburagi as well as other government funds. In 2017, a case was filed over the “illegal” transfer of the FD money to different bank accounts by the board. The case was later transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
A police officer investigating the case said that the CID had recovered the money, made arrests and filed a charge sheet.
Now, in the fresh case, the complainant has expressed suspicion over creating FD in Chintamani instead of Bengaluru. “The complainant’s claim is that had the FD been done here in Bengaluru, it would have earned a profit of Rs 8 crore. The then-CEO’s decision to create the FD in Chintamani is suspicious and incurred a loss of Rs 8 crore to the board,” the officer told DH. Police have written to the CID, seeking the 2017 case files, and will decide the future course of action.
Abbas said that the board sent Zulfiquar Ulla a notice in 2022 but his reply was unsatisfactory. The board brought this to the attention of the secretary of the Minorities Welfare,
Haj and Wakf Department, who asked for filing a criminal complaint against the former CEO.