Bengaluru (PTI): A person accused of having stolen a large quantity of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency a few years ago has been arrested in connection with the hacking of a Tumakuru-based cryptocurrency exchange website, police said.

Srikrishna alias Sriki was arrested late on Monday night. He is accused of stealing Bitcoin worth Rs one crore in 2017. As cases pertaining to Bitcoin theft increased, the Karnataka government set up a Special Investigation Team to probe it.

Sriki was first arrested in November 2020 for alleged hacking the state government’s websites and stealing money from there. He is alleged to have converted the money into cryptocurrency.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.