BENGALURU: Former India cricketer and U-19 team coach
Rahul Dravid and badminton Olympian Saina
Nehwal were among the celebrities who had parked their funds in a Bengaluru investment firm accused of cheating at least 1,776 investors of hundreds of crores of rupees, police said on Tuesday.
Police sources said Dravid and his family members had invested Rs 35 crore with Vikram Investments and managed to get back about Rs 20 crore. Dravid himself accounted for investments worth Rs 20 crore over the past six years and got Rs 12 crore back, they added. Nehwal reportedly invested around Rs 1.5 crore and got back Rs 75 lakh. Former Karnataka cricketer Avinash Vaidya also figures among the list of people who parked their money with the firm.
Badminton player Saina Nehwal.Expand
Dravid is yet respond to our queries. The TOI was unable to reach Nehwal, who is away in the UK for the All England Championships starting on Wednesday. Her family did not respond to queries on her reported investment.
Jayanagar ACP Srinivas H, who is heading the three teams formed to unravel the scale of the fraud by Vikram Investments, said the investors included Dravid’s wife Vijeta, brother Vijay and Vijay’s wife Bhavana Rao.
On Monday, police had re-gistered 66 complaints against the Banashankari-based Vikram Investments. By Tuesday, that number went up to 160 as people landed up at police stations across the city to complain they had been chea- ted of huge sums of money.
The celebrities were promised 23-35% returns a year. “Not one of these high-profile investors has yet complained to us about cheating,” a police officer said. “We learnt about these celebrity investments during our interrogation of the main accused,
Raghavendra Srinath, founder of the firm, and Sutram Suresh, one of his wealth managers,” an officer said.