JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy has said former Bengaluru police commissioner Shankar Bidari was the one who allowed the single-digit lottery scam to thrive.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, he said Bidari, who had served as the City police chief between 2008 and 2011, used to hobnob with the illegal lottery kingpin Pari Rajan and also introduced him to IPS officer Alok Kumar, who had now landed in the soup.
“It is a known fact that Rajan used to visit Bidari’s office every day. Bidari himself would take him in his car to ITC Gardenia, where they would indulge in all kinds of activities. The same Bidari brigade introduced Rajan to Alok Kumar,” Kumaraswamy claimed.
The former chief minister said M V Chandrakanth, a police superintendent in the north zone of the lottery and excise wing, too, had a role in the scam. The officer, a relative of Siddaramaiah, had tried to appease his higher-ups by promising them kickbacks of Rs 25 lakh a month, if he was transferred to the south zone of the wing.
He said the recently suspended Dharanesh, SP, was in the south zone and that he was making a payment of Rs 15 lakh to his seniors. However, he has been made a scapegoat as he is a dalit, he said.
He said Siddaramaiah had helped Chandrakanth get the job as DySP in 1999. The lottery and IPL betting rackets are worth Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 crore each.
Rajan was running the lottery trade by employing hundreds of youths. He had hired 300 two-wheelers in Bengaluru and the people he had employed would go around to collect money, he said.
As many as 600 to 800 cell phones were used for the activity and Rajan used to collected Rs three crore to Rs four crore a day in the process. The racket was carried out behind the Upparpet police station, he added. Kumaraswamy said he had banned single-digit lottery when he was the chief minister, but the successive governments had let the illegal trade thrive. The government should reinstate the Excise and Lottery Prohibition Cell, which it had disbanded, he said.
He said Governor Vajubhai Vala should take cognisance of the interim report of the CID on the lottery racket and dismiss the Congress government in the State.
Why has the government not acted against SP Chandrakanth, a relative of the CM?
Why has the government not acted on the lottery scam as it did in the case of D K Ravi’s death?
Superintendent of Police Dharanesh was suspended because he is a Dalit.
K J George is protecting an IG-rank officer involved in the Rs 2.26-cr robbery from in a bus in Mysuru.
The epicentre of single-digit lottery is Kalasipalya in Bengaluru.
Who is Pari Rajan?
Pari Rajan hails from KGF in Kolar district and is in his mid 40s. He ventured into lottery business in early 1990 when lottery system was legal in Karnataka.
Rajan started his career as a PRO with a reputed lottery ticket wholesale trading firm. Rajan’s PR skills helped him establish cordial links with the police department. He identified weaknesses of the police officers and exploited it.
Before the lottery was banned by the Congress-JD(S) coalition government headed by Dharam Singh in 2004, there were two major wholesale agencies selling tickets at Majestic area in Bengaluru and Rajan was an employee in one of the agencies. Rajan’s duty to was to establish links with the police officers and manage them with money and gifts.
After the ban, Rajan helped those who wished to set up their own agencies. He also ventured into Kerala state lottery. He expanded his empire in Karnataka-Kerala border. Rajan used money, liquor and expensive gifts to win the trust of senior police officers and expanded his business.
Published 23 May 2015, 19:51 IST