Sasikala holds regular durbar in jail, Roopa says in report

DHNS
July 16, 2017

Bengaluru, Jul 16: V K Sasikala, the convicted Tamil Nadu politician, enjoys the services of a cook inside her cell on the first floor, sources said, quoting a report submitted by DIG (Prisons) D Roopa.Sasikala

The jail staff have also given her a special room with a table and chair. Four chairs for visitors facilitate regular “office-like” meetings with Sasikala, the report purportedly says.

Sasikala’s “office” is located next to the office of a female jail superintendent in charge of women’s barracks. Roopa learnt about the arrangement from a staffer, after which she inspected the spot and prepared the report which she later submitted to the state police chief Rupak Kumar Dutta, the Home Secretary, the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) and her immediate boss, the DGP (Prisons) H S Sathyanarayana Rao.

Her enquiries revealed that prison staff let in more visitors than allowed in the manual. Rules about duration and frequency of visits were also violated. Other VIP prisoners have been provided similar facilities.

The report says two senior officials, attached to the Bengaluru and Belagavi prisons, had prodded inmates into protesting against her after she exposed jail irregularities. She has sought stringent action against them.

Footage vanished?

Roopa suspects systematic efforts to destroy evidence of irregularities at the Parappana Agrahara jail.

Her second report purportedly says CCTV installed at the barracks had been deliberately rendered dysfunctional. The CCTV cameras do not cover visitor rooms with cameras 7 and 8 remaining broken, a source quoted her report as saying. A significant amount of ‘select’ footage has also been deleted from the DVR at the headquarters of the Prisons Department.

The prison authorities have deleted crucial footage that could have proved her charges. She had used a video camera from the department to record the statements of inmates on June 28 and July 10, and entered the details in the prison dairy, but much of it has vanished, the report indicates.

Roopa had lunch with the inmates and even shared her phone number with them when she came to know of irregularities inside the prison. The report says she had asked a jail employee to send her the footage.

When nothing came, an enraged Roopa questioned the staffer, who said her seniors had prevented them from handing over the footage to her. When she persisted, she was given a pen drive with nothing significant.

The report purportedly says Roopa then came to know the footage had been deleted at the behest of her seniors.

Footage covering the barracks and visitor areas have been erased, the report complains.

Comments

wellwisher
 - 
Monday, 17 Jul 2017

Mr Shettar , state chief minister comments his just to understand our blind fold bjp criminal mind leaders that a hindu never play communal mind politics and game for his personal sake. He always work for his mother lands development and for citizens better future. There is no criminal game like bjp leaders.

Please try to understand the meaning i/o of teasing.

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coastaldigest.com web desk
July 13,2020

Mangaluru, July 13: A week-long lockdown will be imposed in Dakshina Kannada from the night of July 15, according to district in-charge minister Kota Srinivas Poojary.

The decision was taken in a meeting of elected representatives in the presence of Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh. The DC is expected to issue guidelines for the lockdown soon. 

In a video message, Poojary said that during the video conference, chief minister B S Yediyurappa asked the administrations and elected representatives of the respective district to take a call on re-imposing lockdown to check the mounting coronavirus cases. 

“We have decided to impose a week-long lockdown from the night of July 15. Hence, people should buy all necessary things for a week before the beginning of lockdown,” he Mr Poojary. 

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News Network
January 7,2020

Bengaluru, Jan 7: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths held an international bookie in connection with the Karnataka Premier League (KPL) betting scam and spot-fixing racket, police said on Tuesday.

The bookie was identified as Jitin Sait (32), a native of Sonipat in Haryana.

'We had obtained and issued a Look Out Circular (LOC) against Sait, and on Sunday, he was caught after he landed at the Kempegowda International Airport from the Netherlands.

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News Network
February 19,2020

Feb 19: Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty was once a typical billionaire with a taste for the high-life.

He splurged on a private jet, vintage cars and two entire floors of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. His website shows him hobnobbing with politicians, Bill Gates and Bollywood royalty.

“The thrill of speed and freedom makes me love cars,” Shetty, 77, told local reporters last year.

Shetty had more than enough money -- at least on paper -- to afford such a lifestyle from companies he helped found, including hospital operator NMC Health Plc and financial services firm Finablr Plc. On Dec. 10, his stakes in the public companies were valued at $2.4 billion, making up the bulk of a fortune spanning education, hospitality and one of the world’s oldest tea companies.

Then, a week later, Carson Block came along.

Block’s investment firm, Muddy Waters, issued a report criticizing NMC’s accounts and disclosing a short position. Since then, Muddy Waters’s scrutiny has snowballed into a troubling scenario for Shetty that sheds light on his complex share arrangements and casts doubts about his net worth. His holdings in Finablr and NMC are worth $885 million, but Shetty’s fortune may now be just a fraction of that, depending on the size of his borrowings.

Filings this month show that Shetty pledged a quarter of his NMC stake against loans with First Abu Dhabi Bank and Zurich-based Falcon Private Bank. Two other shareholders may own half of his reported stake. Another lender -- Al Salam Bank Bahrain -- has already sold some of those shares to enforce security over a loan for Shetty, and NMC said Tuesday that First Abu Dhabi Bank sold another chunk earlier this month.

The situation “seems to have gone beyond some of the issues that Muddy Waters focused on initially,“ said Gavin Launder, a fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management, who owned shares in NMC until October. “The increased scrutiny has unearthed other issues.”

Law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a review of Shetty’s holdings at his request, a spokesperson for the Indian-born businessman said, declining to comment further until the analysis is completed. Shetty resigned Sunday as NMC’s chairman.

In its Dec. 17 report on NMC, Muddy Waters hinted at potential overpayment for assets, inflated cash balances and understated debt. Shares of the United Arab Emirates’ biggest private health-care provider have since plunged 67%, and the firm is now the focus of takeover speculation. The sell-off also spread to Finablr, whose stock has tumbled 64% in that span.

NMC has disputed Muddy Waters’s claims, and the company hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an independent review of the short seller’s allegations. Meanwhile, local regulators “are making inquiries with the relevant parties,” a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority said.

Shetty is hardly the only ultra-wealthy person to leverage his assets. Elon Musk has used his shares in Tesla Inc. to obtain personal loans, while Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison has put up millions of the company’s shares to fund a lavish lifestyle that includes trophy properties, America’s Cup teams and the Indian Wells tennis facility in California.

But such deals can also sour, as demonstrated by Shetty’s lenders selling shares his investment firm pledged. He and his advisers are investigating details of the sales as part of their legal review, according to filings.

To complicate matters, Shetty pledged another batch of NMC stock in 2018 as part of a so-called equity collar arrangement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that uses options to limit the impact from share moves. Last month, he also pledged most of his stake in Finablr to refinance a loan from the company’s takeover of foreign-exchange firm Travelex for about $1.2 billion.

BRS Ventures Investment, the UAE-based holding company for most of Shetty’s assets, doesn’t report consolidated financials, preventing a complete analysis of his net worth. His other assets include a catering company, a waste-management firm and pharmaceutical business Neopharma, which four months ago was in the early stages of planning for an initial public offering.

Block, 43, earned his reputation as a short seller a decade ago through targeting U.S.-listed Chinese companies that he claimed were frauds. More recently, his San Francisco-based firm focused on British litigation-finance firm Burford Capital Ltd. and Japanese biotech stock PeptiDream Inc. Short sellers seek to benefit from a decline in a company’s share price.

Shetty founded NMC in 1975 after moving to Abu Dhabi from his native India. He created Finablr two years ago to consolidate his financial brands before listing it on the London Stock Exchange in 2019.

Block said he didn’t anticipate NMC’s shareholding drama.

“I wouldn’t have been able to predict that we’d get these bizarre disclosures about unclear share ownership coming out of the company,” he said in a Feb. 13 phone interview. “This has been obviously a more dramatic unraveling than we usually see.”

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