VVIP Escort Constable Suspended for Misusing Petro-Cards

Bengaluru: An armed police constable (APC) attached to the City Armed Reserves (CAR) has been accused of misappropriation, cheating and forgery by his senior officers who have lodged a case against him in Cottonpet police station.

Nageshwar Rao, 40, the APC attached to the CAR Headquarters on Mysore Road, was a driver of a vehicle used for escort duties for the then Chief Minister of Karnataka B.S. Yeddyurappa. The driver misused petro-cards issued by the police department, filling fuel for non-official vehicles. He also used to swipe at petrol bunks and pocket the money instead of fuel.

He has been accused of even tampering with the details in the vehicle log-in registers and forging other officials’ signatures in the registers of vehicles used for VVIP escort duties, said a senior police officer. The misappropriation came to light in March last year when the constable claimed that he had filled fuel during escort duty for the then-CM Yeddyurappa.

The officials who probed this, found that during those dates, the CM had not traveled by road. Instead he had taken the rail route. A departmental inquiry was initiated against the officer, which proved that he was guilty of misappropriation, cheating and forging other official’s signatures in the escort duty vehicle registers.

“It’s not the amount of money that has been misappropriated that matters to the department, but the enormity of the offences committed by the officer, like forging other officers’ signatures and tampering with the department records that made us initiate a departmental inquiry,” said a senior police officer from the CAR.

“We have formally registered a criminal case against the officer two weeks ago. Now he is under suspension pending investigations by the Cottonpet police,” the senior officer added. The Cottonpet police have initiated investigations on the constable. “We are in the process of assessing how much money the constable has misappropriated as the offences continued for about a year. The amount is running into almost a lakh,” said a senior police officer from Cottonpet police station.