During the ongoing Maharashtra assembly elections in India, police raided the home of a man suspected of helping NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule and state Congress chief Nana Patole steal $78 million worth of bitcoin.
Maharashtra is India's richest state and home to the country's financial capital, Mumbai. The ruling Mahayuti Alliance includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party, and the main opposition is the MVA, which includes the NCP (SP).
Days before voting began, a former police officer accused Supriya Sule of stealing seized bitcoin to fund her campaign. They said Sule and Patole misappropriated bitcoins seized by police in a 2018 fraud case.
In 2018, cryptocurrency trader Amit Bharadwaj was arrested by Pune police with $78 million in bitcoin in his wallet. The whistleblower said former Pune police chief Amitabh Gupta instructed that the wallet be replaced. Sule and Patole allegedly took the original wallet and sold the Bitcoin to influence the election.
BJP party leader Sudhanshu Trivedi then shared videos and audio recordings to prove Sule and the relevant personnel discussed these cryptocurrency transactions. On Wednesday, Sule's cousin, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, said that the recordings were authentic and called for a formal investigation.
Sule denied the allegations, stating that the audios were forged through AI with the intention of fraud and defamation. (Protos)