Police inspector booked under corruption charges

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: An FIR has been filed against a Police Inspector for allegedly involving in forgery and corruption while probing a case that did not even come under his jurisdiction.

The FIR was registered against Shankar Naik GK, based on a complaint filed by the ACP of Byatarayanapura Division, Bharat S Reddy.

Before being transferred to Bidadi Police Station, Shankar Naik was serving as Police Inspector at Byatarayanapura Police Station in Bengaluru when he had taken up a theft case in 2022.

A car driver had stolen Rs 75 lakh from a Hoskote resident identified as Harish. When the matter was brought to the notice of Shankar Naik allegedly by one of his accomplice, Loknath Singh, Naik agreed to recover the stolen money but only if he is paid Rs 20 lakh by the victim.

In the complaint it is alleged that Naik prepared a complaint copy himself and got one businessman, John, who did not know Kannada, to forge a signature in order to make the complaint copy look genuine.

Later, Naik also completed the formalities of entering the details of the recovered money, which were all in Rs 500 denomination.

Inspector Naik recovered the stolen cash from the accused but allegedly diverted it for personal use rather than keeping it in the police station or depositing it in the government treasury, the complaint copy read.

Later Naik was transferred to Bidadi Police Station but he failed to hand over the seized amount and station charge to the newly posted inspector.

Noticing irregularities, the senior officials had served several notices to Naik and ordered him to either hand over the money to the new inspector or to deposit it in the state treasury.

On February 6, Naik brought the cash to the police station with different denominations than the ones that were seized. Subsequently, the court ordered that the seized money be handed over to the Income Tax Department and a team of I-T officials approached the Byatarayanapura police on April 19 to take the money.

Based on the complaint by ACP Bharat Reddy, the police have filed an FIR against Shankar Naik under Sections 201 (giving false information), 409 (criminal breach of trust by a public servant), and 465 (forgery) of IPC and also the Prevention of Corruption Act.