IMA scam: CBI seeks prosecution sanction against 6 cops

In more trouble for those named in the IMA ponzi case, the CBI has sought sanction to prosecute six Karnataka officials, including two IPS officers, saying they “blatantly and dishonestly favoured” the accused and allowed them to continue their activities. The CBI has written to the Karnataka government seeking a nod to prosecute Hemant Nimbalkar, a 1998-batch IPS officer, and Ajay Hilori, a 2008-batch IPS officer.

In further trouble for those named in I-Monetary Advisory (IMA) ponzi scam, the CBI has sought sanction to prosecute six Karnataka officials, including two IPS officers, saying they “blatantly and dishonestly favoured” the accused and allowed them to continue their activities ‘unhindered’.

Officials said the CBI has written to the Karnataka government seeking its nod for prosecuting Hemant Nimbalkar, and Ajay Hilori, a 2008-batch IPS officer in connection with the multi-crore ponzi scheme run by IMA.

Nimbalkar was then Inspector General of Economic Offences while Hilori was the then DCP-Bengaluru-East.

The CBI has also sought sanction to prosecute then CID DySP E B Sridhar, Inspector and SHO Commercial Street police station M Ramesh and its sub-inspector P Gowrishankar and the then ACP - Bengaluru North, L C Nagaraj.

“All the above public servants have blatantly and dishonestly favoured IMA Group, allowed it to continue its activities unhindered and failed to take timely action despite being directed to conduct enquiry,” a statement issued by the CBI’s anti-corruption wing in Bengaluru said.

According to the CBI, Sridhar was the Enquiry Officer and Nimbalkar was the supervisory officer in the probe into the allegations against IMA Group.

“Even though more than Rs 4,000 crore of deposits were illegally and unauthorisedly raised from over a lakh of innocent investors, CID-Economic Offence Wing has given a clean chit to IMA Group entities and Mansoor Khan (its promoter). As a result, the activities of the IMA Group continued unhindered,” the statement said.

It claimed Nimbalkar also shared the clean chit report with the Principal Secretary (Revenue).

Nagaraj is accused of giving clean chit without conducting proper enquriy on the “ground that no unauthorised deposits were being collected and
that investments from partners of limited liability partnerships are exempted from KPID Act.

“This was wilful omission both on part of CID-EOW and competent authority in order to blatantly favour the IMA Group and Mansoor Khan,” it said.