Karnataka IPS officer Hemanth Nimbalkar has been embroiled in a series of controversies, right from being dragged into the IMA Ponzi scam to being accused of floating a biased and unfair tender favouring a certain vendor in the Safe City Project for Bengaluru. Nimbalkar has been publicly called out by another IPS officer, D Roopa, who paid the price of bureaucracy for calling out a potential scam. Both the IPS officers were transferred amid the raging controversy on New Year's Eve. That's not the end of it.
In the latest development, controversial IPS officer Nimbalkar has once again been transferred. He was appointed as Inspector General of Police, Internal Security Division, Bengaluru on December 31, but with immediate effect, Nimbalkar is now posted as IGP, Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement.
Prior to the public spat with IPS officer D. Roopa, Nimbalkar was Additional Commissioner of Police (Administration), Bengaluru. At the time, D. Roopa, IPS, was Inspector General of Police and Secretary to government, Home Department. She was transferred as the Managing Director, Karnataka State Handicrafts Development Corporation Ltd., Bengaluru. D. Roopa has been transferred well over 40 times since 2017.
What is the controversy about?
The controversy surrounding multi-crore Bengaluru Smart City Project under the Nirbhaya Fund came to light after a news report mentioned that an unnamed IPS officer had "impersonated" as the Home Secretary to get confidential information and interfered with the tendering process of the Bengaluru Safe City Project.
The content of the report was based on the complaint written by IPS officer Nimbalkar, Additional Commissioner of Police (Administration) to the Karnataka Chief Secretary on December 7. Roopa, IPS had said at the time that she had called the company to know the details about the project as she had found serious irregularities in tender document of the Bengaluru Safe City Project under the Nirbhaya scheme.
D Roopa had also written to the Karnataka Chief Secretary, seeking a probe against Nimbalkar over the tender document which has been dropped. The issue has since taken several twists and turns, which also allegedly triggered the decision to transfer the IPS officers to different departments.
