Airport bomb: Accused Aditya Rao to be handed over to Mangaluru police

Bengaluru, June 24: City-based I Monetary Advisory (IMA), which duped thousands of families, mostly Muslims, in the name of halal investment, has become a bitter reality of "we were robbed by our own people". All the accused except its CEO Mohammad Mansoor Khan have been released on bail in this ponzi scam worth thousands of crores of rupees.

The scam has not only been investigated by SIT and CBI, but it has reverberated many times in the Assembly, corridors of power, and in the courts.

Around 80,000 investors are in trouble after the Monetary Advisory (IMA) scam came to light. Many investors have left this world, many families have split, many marriages have broken down and many have become unemployed, homeless, helpless and hapless. One of the senior IAS office, who had faced arrest in the scam, reportedly killed himself just a day ago.

It has been more than a year since this multi-billion scam came to light. But the affected families still do not see any ray of hope. The government, led by senior IAS officer Harsh Gupta, has set up a special competent authority to address investor grievances in the matter.

According to information provided by Harsh Gupta, investors have to be paid Rs 2,900 crore. But the value of the company's assets seized so far could be around Rs 450 crore. The process of auctioning the assets has not started yet. The authority has developed an online portal for submission of claim forms from investors. But the process of taking applications has not started yet. Syed Gulab, a social worker overseeing the case, says that after all the claim forms have been submitted, we will get a clear picture about the exact number of investors and the total amount of arrears. But this process may take a few more months to complete.

Senior journalist Maqbool Ahmed Siraj says that IMA has systematically deceived people in the name of halal investment through capital scheme. In 2006, Muhammad Mansoor Khan, a one-time small businessman, set up a company. He began to attract large number of investors by creating the greed for more profit among middle class and poor people.

By 2015, the company had received money from more than 12,000 investors and continued to pay monthly profits. By the time the company closed in 2019, 80,000 people had invested their hard-earned money here. In Bengaluru, the company expanded its reach by investing in two major gold showrooms, hospitals, schools, several medical stores, a publishing center, a supermarket, and real estate firm.

Mr Siraj says that Mansoor Khan and his team not only lured the poor and middle class to pursue their own interests but also created a favourable atmosphere for their so called business by winning the hearts of politicians, government officials, clerics, religious institutions and media.

Unsuspecting people invested their money in a bid to make more profit in less time. When the company stopped making profits and Mansoor Khan suddenly fled on June 9, 2019, the investors woke up the to the reality.

Apart from residents of Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka, people from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra other states also have invested their money.

Bengaluru, Feb 14: Raja and Rani got married on Valentine's Day at Cubbon Park here.

The bride and the groom were decked up in bridal finery were heralded with traditional wedding music with nadaswaram and thavil (percussion) . The catch was that the married couple were horses.

Pro-Kannada activist and Kannada Vatal Party chairman Vatal Nagaraj performed the marriage ceremony of the two horses.

Nagaraj gave a dhoti and shirt to Raja (male horse) and a saree along with a taali (mangal sutra) to Rani (female horse).

Nagaraj has been conducting such ceremonies in the past too. Last year he had married off two sheep- Jacob and Carolyn in a similar ceremony.

The activist says he is all for love and urged anti-Valentine's Day supporters not to oppose lovers and their Valentine's Day celebration.

He also urged the Central government and the Karnataka state governments to give Rs 1 lakh and RS 50,000 respectively to the "lovers to support their love" by helping them get married.

Meanwhile, sweets were distributed to all the guests who had participated in the Valentine's Day marriage ceremony today.

Ballari, Apr 18: Hosapete town in Ballari district of Karnataka gasped in disbelief as it turned out that 11 members of one single family are positive for the coronavirus.

The whole town has been declared a containment zone and is being surveilled 24X7.

The family includes seven members whose tests returned positive today, three who tested Covid-19 positive on March 30 and one other member subsequently.

The seven who tested positive today had been negative when they were earlier tested along with the others.

They have all now been shifted to isolation wards at the District Hospital in Ballari.

Including this family of 11, Ballari has 13 positive cases so far, with one case each reported from Ballari and Siraguppa towns.

Startled by this sudden upsurge from Hosapete, the district administration has set up 16 fever clinics to screen people and six COVID care centres to treat positive cases. There are two dedicated COVID hospitals, one at Ballari and another at Torangallu in Sandur.

A team of psychological counsellors have been put on duty to provide support to the patients at the isolation centres.