Crime Branch to seek opinion in Krishna chit fund scam

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even as state Crime Branch has launched a preliminary inquiry into the Nirmal Krishna chit fund scam, a decision on registering a case is still pending owing to jurisdiction issues. According to sources, the Crime Branch was seeking legal opinion on whether a case could be registered here as the firm is situated at Palukal in the  Kerala-Tamil Nadu border area of Kanyakumari district, even as a good number of its customers were from Kerala. Sources said that the Tamil Nadu police had already registered a case and the state police could liaison with them.

The state Crime Branch, in coordination with the Tamil Nadu police Q-Branch, has initiated steps to track Nirmal Krishnan, the key promoter of Nirmal Krishna Nidhi Limited. His residence at Jagathy here was also under police surveillance. The Crime Branch team led by DySP Anilkumar will conduct a camp at Parassala for collecting the statements from more persons who had deposits or chitties in the firm. On Monday, the Crime Branch took statements from about ten persons. The Tamil Nadu police also urged the investors to give their complaints to the Q-branch DySP at Nagercoil. The two employees of the firm held on Sunday were produced before a local court at Nagercoil and remanded in judicial custody.

The Q-Branch will soon seek their custody for interrogation. Meanwhile, an insolvency petition filed by Nirmal Krishna at a local court in Thiruvananthapuram was posted for September 25. Earlier,  it was posted for Monday. It was also learnt that the Crime Branch was also looking into the allegations of certain benami dealings of the firm as well as its nexus with a Congress MLA and former minister from Thiruvananthapuram. It was  estimated that the firm had a customer base of 16,000 and that the total deposits were over  Rs 1,000 crore.