Bengaluru, April 20, 2026. India's Enforcement Directorate searched more than 12 premises across Karnataka on Monday in a money laundering investigation tied to Srikrishna Ramesh, a Bengaluru-based hacker known as "Sriki," whose alleged theft of cryptocurrency from multiple exchanges dates back nearly a decade. The agency's Delhi unit confirmed that among the sites searched were properties linked to Mohammed Haris Nalapad and Omar Farook Nalapad, sons of N A Haris, a four-time Karnataka Congress MLA and current chairman of the Bengaluru Development Authority. Mohammed Haris Nalapad previously served as Karnataka Youth Congress president, a position that gives the allegations heightened political resonance.

The ED is conducting the raids under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. Investigators allege that stolen virtual digital assets (VDAs, India's statutory term for cryptocurrencies) were sold through trading platforms and the resulting funds were then moved through multiple layered bank accounts to conceal their origin. The agency stated directly: "Mohammed Haris Nalapad and Omar Farook Nalapad are alleged to be close associates of Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki and are among the main beneficiaries of proceeds of crime." Aqeeb Khan, grandson of former Union Cabinet Minister K Rahman Khan, was also named as a suspected beneficiary. Mohammed Haris Nalapad denied the allegations, saying he and his brother "did no wrong and never received illicit funds as alleged." Not all law enforcement voices have aligned on every aspect of the investigation: Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant stated at an earlier stage that "No bitcoin was transferred from hacker Srikrishna's account."

Who is Sriki and what did he steal?

Srikrishna Ramesh, born in 1995, reportedly began hacking at age eight and was moderating the international h4cky0u hacking forum as a teenager. He briefly co-founded a Bitcoin exchange called satos.nl in Amsterdam before returning to India.

The ED's current investigation traces back to a series of Karnataka Police FIRs filed from 2017 onward. Karnataka's Central Crime Branch filed an initial chargesheet in 2020, but the case remained largely unresolved, a gap that led to the constitution of a new Special Investigation Team in 2023. The most documented incident involves the alleged theft of 60.6 BTC from Unocoin Technologies, a Tumakuru-based crypto exchange. That haul was worth roughly 1.14 crore rupees at the time. At Bitcoin's current price of approximately $75,325 per coin on April 20, 2026, those same 60.6 BTC would be valued at over $4.56 million (approximately 38 crore rupees). The roughly 30x appreciation in value since the original theft illustrates a growing challenge in crypto crime cases: the proceeds of crime keep growing even when investigators are actively pursuing the trail.

Sriki's own statements to police went much further. He claimed to have hacked several global exchanges including Bitfinex, BTC-e, Bitstamp, and others, ultimately profiting by around 20,008 BTC, which he said he spent entirely on a lavish lifestyle. Congress politicians in 2021 put the total value of hacked Bitcoin at around 10,000 crore rupees, though that figure has not been judicially confirmed. In 2019, Sriki also allegedly breached Karnataka's state e-procurement portal, enabling illicit transfers totaling 46 crore rupees across two transactions.

The money trail under scrutiny

The ED is currently examining approximately 4.5 crore rupees in alleged financial transactions between Sriki and his associates. Sriki's key associate and alleged money manager, Robin Khandelwal, reportedly received 130 BTC between 2017 and 2020 and converted the funds into 3.48 crore rupees spread across multiple bank accounts. Another individual, Abishek Jain, converted additional Bitcoin into 1.5 crore rupees through hawala channels (informal value-transfer networks used to move money without a formal banking trail).

The Nalapad brothers are alleged to have covered Sriki's hotel stays and travel expenses between 2017 and 2018, a connection that investigators reportedly first began examining after a 2018 pub brawl at Farzi Cafe involving Mohammed Nalapad triggered wider scrutiny of his associates. Suneesh Hegde, a BBMP contractor, is also alleged to have funded Sriki's luxury hotel stays, pointing to a broader support network beyond the Nalapad brothers alone. A prior round of interrogations involving the brothers took place in June 2024 over the same alleged links.

A maturing enforcement framework

Monday's raids reflect how India's crypto enforcement capacity has changed in a short time. A March 2023 PMLA notification brought virtual digital asset service providers formally under anti-money laundering obligations for the first time, giving agencies like the ED a clear statutory basis to pursue cryptocurrency-linked laundering cases. The Financial Intelligence Unit updated its AML and counter-terrorism financing guidelines again in January 2026, requiring stricter suspicious transaction reporting from exchanges. The ED's own references to blockchain records and digital wallet activity as evidence types suggest investigators are deploying on-chain forensics (software tools that trace transactions recorded on a public blockchain) to build their evidentiary case, a significant step forward from earlier Indian crypto investigations that lacked that capability. India has approximately 119 million crypto users as of 2025, ranking first in Chainalysis's Global Crypto Adoption Index, meaning the regulatory stakes are substantial.

The political dimension adds another layer of complexity. The Special Investigation Team re-examining the Sriki case was constituted under the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) by the same Karnataka Congress government now implicated through its MLA's family connections. The SIT re-arrested Sriki in May 2024, marking a significant escalation in the case's active phase. That tension will almost certainly draw opposition scrutiny in the coming weeks. Adding a further layer of political irony, Congress national spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala had previously demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the Sriki affair and publicly flagged a five-month delay in issuing an Interpol notification in the case. A Congress-linked family now finds itself at the center of the same probe.

For South Asian regulators in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, all of whom are navigating early-stage crypto frameworks, how India handles asset recovery and prosecution in a case of this scale will carry significant weight. The ED has so far seized 4,209.74 crore rupees worth of crypto assets across all its PMLA cases nationally. The Sriki network represents a test of whether that enforcement machinery can reach cases with deep political entanglements.