Cops hunt for two over fake sureties

The city police are on the lookout for two men who submitted fake sureties to the court to bail out two Delhi-based businessmen. They were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for attempting to bribe a senior Income Tax officer to settle a case related to a pan Masala company last year.

Based on two separate complaints filed by an assistant registrar with the Halasuru Gate police, they are trying to trace the two accused men identified as Keshava M P Mohan (59) and Sathish K Lakkappa (39). According to the police, both of them had submitted a set of property documents claiming that Keshava owned 3600 square feet land and Sathish owned 1500 square feet land. The documents were submitted as sureties to bail out two businessmen, Vinod Kumar Banka and Sanjay Kohli.

The duo along with three others including a lawyer and a chartered accountant were arrested by the CBI in September last year for transferring money to a middleman through benami accounts for allegedly bribing a senior IT official who was dealing with the case related to tax evasion by the pan masala company.

The accused had then approached the High Court seeking bail which directed the city civil and session court to grant them conditional bail in April this year.

As per the bail conditions, the accused submitted fake sureties and the court granted them bail.

Detected during scrutiny

Meanwhile, the surety property documents were passed on to concerned court officials for scrutiny and during verification, it was found that the documents were fake. In his complaint, Maregowda, Assistant Registrar for the city civil and session court, said that the property documents submitted to the court were owned by one Ratna Kumar and Hemalatha and not by the duo. The Halasuru Gate police registered FIRs after that.

However, sources from the CBI court said that though the accused got the bail on fake sureties, they did not jump bail and attended court hearings regularly.