Burglars strike at IMA's defunct hospital, cops find out two months after robbery

Frontline Multispeciality Hospital, the defunct healthcare facility owned by the scam-hit IMA group, has been burgled, with thieves taking everything from expensive medical equipment to furniture.

What makes the burglary rather audacious is that the property had been seized by the government and its valuables sold in an auction. Hold your breath, the burglary is suspected to have taken place a good two months ago during the Covid-19 lockdown but was detected only on July 13 when officials turned up to assess the valuables in order to show them to the auction winner. The proceeds from the auction were to be used to pay the investors who had lost their hard-earned money in the Ponzi scam.

IMA, or I Monetary Advisory, offered its investors, mostly Muslims, annual returns of up to 50% under the so-called Halal model. The group ran several businesses, including Frontline hospital, and eventually shut down in June 2019, cheating investors to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore.

Frontline hospital, housed in a four-storey building on Venkataswamy Naidu Road in Shivajinagar, central Bengaluru, also shuttered as soon as the scam surfaced. The hospital and its valuables had been attached by the special officer and competent authority, IMA case. Officials had assessed the valuables on all the four floors and sold them in an e-auction in November 2020.

A team from the office of the special officer and competent authority, IMA case, visited the hospital around 11.30 am on July 13 to inspect the valuables and show them to the auction winner.

What they found shocked them beyond belief.

The grille at the entrance was broken. Burglars had taken away everything they could, from medical equipment to furniture and air coolers to batteries. As for things that were hard to remove, such as fixed electrical and electronic goods, the burglars damaged them beyond use.

Nagaraj K, an officer in the office of the special officer and competent authority, IMA case, has filed a complaint at the jurisdictional Commercial Street police station.

He told the police that he would give them a list of all the stolen valuables and their worth soon by checking the valuation report.

An officer investigating the case said the burglars evidently knew that the hospital was seized by the government. They were also aware that no security guard was deployed at the building.

They must have also known that CCTV cameras at the hospital weren’t switched on. The burglary was most likely carried out during the lockdown, and the thieves carted away the valuables in a goods vehicle, the officer surmised.