Bengaluru: A case has been registered against two Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers in Bengaluru for allegedly forcing a senior government official to name former Congress minister B Nagendra, arrested in the purported multi-crore scam at the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation, and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
The FIR was registered on July 22, following a complaint by Kallesh B, the additional director of the Social Welfare Department.
According to the complainant, he was summoned by the ED for questioning on July 16 in connection with the misappropriation of funds at the corporation. He subsequently visited the Central agency’s office in Shantinagar and recorded his statement before Murali Kannan, Assistant Director, ED, as per the FIR.
Kallesh claimed that he was asked 17 questions and he answered all of them, while he told the ED officer that he needed files and his subordinate officials to answer three of the questions.
“Kannan told me to return on July 18 at 2 pm when he will get the files and other officials,” Kallesh alleged.
Kallesh then signed his statement and when he asked for a copy, he was allegedly refused one.
The questioning resumes: this time orally. According to Kallesh, the ED officer told him that it was wrong to deposit the money in the corporation at the Union Bank of India’s (UBI) MG Road branch via the treasury. “I told them that I had billed it as per the government order and deposited the sum on March 25, 2024,” Kallesh claimed in his complaint. “However, the money was illegally being transferred from the account from March 5 and hence I was not in the wrong. Despite telling them this, they threatened me with arrest and that I would not get bail for at least two years.”
Kallesh further claimed that Kannan told him the ED would help, but he had to accept that he deposited the money based on directions from “Nagendra, the government’s highest authority and the Finance Department”.
Kallesh was then sent to one Mittal, IRS. “He began scolding me and told me that I was a criminal, I would be arrested, I wouldn’t get bail for two to three years, and that he had read my statement and it was of no use,” Kallesh alleged.
“'If you want the ED’s help, you have to give in writing that you deposited the money at the directions of the Chief Minister, Nagendra and the Finance Department and that I was pressurised by them,' I was told. They scared me by saying that I would be jailed for seven years,” Kallesh claimed.
He alleged that Mittal called Kannan to his chamber and both of them repeated the same things while the latter said to take action on July 18.
The FIR was filed against Mittal and Kannan under BNS Sections 3(5) (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 351(2) (criminal intimidation) and 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace). A non-cognizable report (NCR) was first registered at the Sheshadripuram station and the case was then transferred to Wilson Garden police station.