Unocoin Bitcoin theft case: Karnataka Police SIT names Congress MLA N A Haris’s son in chargesheet

A youth Congress leader and son of a Bengaluru MLA has been named in a chargesheet filed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police over the theft of Bitcoins worth Rs 1.14 crore from the Unocoin crypto exchange in Tumkur in 2017.

Mohammed Nalapad, 35, the elder son of Bengaluru Congress MLA N A Haris, was named along with the hacker Sriki, 34, and his accountant Robin Khandelwal, 32, as the accused in a chargesheet filed last month by the SIT, police sources said. The chargesheet submitted to a court is yet to receive a criminal case number, the sources added.

Mohammed Nalapad, a youth Congress leader in Bengaluru, is accused of being a beneficiary of the Bitcoins that were stolen by hacker Sriki after illegally gaining access to the Unocoin cryptocurrency exchange in 2017.

The naming of Mohammed Nalapad in the Unocoin hacking case comes close on the heels of the Enforcement Directorate carrying out searches on April 20, 2026, on properties belonging to Sriki, the Nalapads, Aqueeb Khan, the grandson of former Congress MP Rehman Khan, and Sunish Hegde, a gambling businessman who is an associate of Sriki.

On May 8, the ED also arrested Sriki, his accountant Robin Khandelwal, and associate Sunish Hegde for allegedly laundering cryptocurrency and funds stolen or extorted through the hacking of poker sites, crypto exchanges, and other online systems between 2017 and 2020.

Sriki, Khandelwal, and Sunish Hegde were taken into 10 days of custody by the ED initially and have been in judicial custody subsequently. Sunish Hegde has meanwhile sought bail on medical grounds, and the matter is pending in the principal sessions court.

In court filings following the arrests on May 8, the ED has detailed its findings linking the trio to multiple cases registered in Karnataka between 2017 and 2020 wherein stolen cryptocurrency was laundered by various means, including splurging on a luxurious life, renting private jets, gambling, and staying in high-end resorts and hotels around the country.

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The ED has referred to the 2017 Unocoin hacking case, among other cases, against Sriki and said that Mohammed Nalapad, his brother Omar Nalapad, Aqueeb Khan, their associates Prasidh Shetty and Sujay R were beneficiaries of the hacking of the Unocoin exchange by Sriki in 2017.

The ED search on April 20 on Sriki, the Nalapad brothers, and others came at a time when the SIT of the Karnataka Police – probing the activities of hacker Srikrishna since 2023 – was compiling its chargesheet with regard to the theft of Rs 1.14 crore in cryptocurrency from the Unocoin crypto exchange in Tumkur in 2017.

Mohammed Haris Nalapad, Omar Farook Nalapad, and Aqueeb Khan were named by the ED on April 20 as close associates of Sriki and alleged primary beneficiaries of proceeds of crime under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

Following the ED searches, Mohammed Nalapad had questioned its timing. “This is not to target my brother or me. Their target was my father, and it was to make sure that he missed an opportunity to be in the state Cabinet,” Mohammed Nalapad said on April 21 in reaction to the ED searches, which he claimed were done by the ED five years after the filing of a complaint.

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The Karnataka SIT and the ED had earlier questioned Mohammed Nalapad, Omar Nalapad, and Aqueeb Khan in 2024 and 2025 with regard to their financial transactions with hacker Srikrishna, who was first arrested by the Bengaluru crime branch police in November 2020 in connection with a case of buying drugs on the dark web using Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin probe SIT was set up by the Karnataka Congress government in July 2023, shortly after it came to power, to probe allegations of police and political corruption during the investigation of cases of hacking by Sriki during the BJP tenure from 2019-23.

The SIT had arrested Sriki and Khandelwal in 2024 in connection with the Unocoin hacking case, where 60.6 Bitcoin worth Rs 1.14 crore was stolen.

The SIT probe of the association of the hacker Srikrishna with the Haris brothers, and the grandson of Rehman Khan, has centred around a Rs 57 lakh Porsche Macan car bought from a showroom in Bengaluru in January 2018, and returned within a month for a refund. The purchase of the car happened after the Unocoin exchange hacking in July 2017.

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“Sriki (Srikrishna) and associates got funds from multiple hacking crimes. The stolen cryptocurrency was converted using the services of his accountant and used for various purposes – purchase of cars, booking flights, paying hotel fares,” an SIT official said earlier in 2023.

Tumkur complaint

On July 17, 2017, Harish B V, the co-founder of Unocoin Technologies, one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges in India, filed a police complaint in Tumkur, stating that 60.6 Bitcoin were stolen from the exchange by unknown persons in a hacking that occurred on June 23, 2017.

The complaint alleged that the total value of the Bitcoin stolen in the hacking was Rs 1.14 crore – at the rate of Rs 1.67 lakh per Bitcoin (the prevailing rate for Bitcoin at the time). The complaint alleged that the stolen Bitcoins were moved to two separate online locations.

According to statements given by hacker Sriki’s accountant Robin Khandelwal to the Bengaluru police in 2020-21, he sold 130 Bitcoins that were given to him by Srikrishna between 2017-20, and a total of Rs 3.48 crore from the sale of the Bitcoins was moved into accounts of persons indicated by the hacker. While Rs 1.5 crore was provided in cash (through hawala routes) to the hacker himself.

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In the statements to the police after his arrest in November 2020 by the Bengaluru crime branch police, Khandelwal also indicated links to the Nalapad brothers.

Khandelwal reported meeting Sriki at a five-star hotel with his friends, including Mohammad Nalapad, Omar Nalapad, and their associate Mohammed Nafi, among others, during a visit to Bengaluru in January 2018.

“At this time, Srikrishna had hacked the databases of Bitcoin exchanges and kept a lot of Bitcoins with him. He showed me the Unocoin database,” Khandelwal said in a voluntary statement given to the Bengaluru police in 2021.

In a statement given to the Karnataka CID Police in 2021, following his arrest in connection with a July 2019 hacking at the Karnataka government’s e-procurement portal, Sriki claimed to have made an “investment” of 150 Bitcoin and 1,100 Ethereum with Mohammed Nalapad after meeting the brothers in 2017.

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Several police officers who were part of the Bengaluru crime branch unit in the 2020-2021 period have been investigated by the SIT for corruption during the probe of cases involving the hacker, and four officers have been accused of wrongdoing, along with a cyber expert who assisted the police in probing the hacker’s cases.

In the Unocoin hacking case, a director of the cryptocurrency exchange is alleged to have paid an amount of Rs 7 lakh to a Bengaluru police officer to recover the stolen Bitcoin after the hacker Srikrishna was first arrested in November 2020, the SIT has found, as per legal filings.

Based on statements given by witnesses who helped the police investigate the hacker in 2020, the police SIT has suggested that the hacker Sriki was in possession of over 4,000 Bitcoin valued at Rs 850 crore at the time of his arrest in November 2020.