Bengaluru:  Barely nine months after the Income Tax Department raided Congress trouble-shooter and Kanakapura MLA D.K. Shivakumar and his brother, Bengaluru Rural MP D.K. Suresh, the CBI yesterday searched their aides in connection with a 2016 case of illegally exchanging Rs. 10 lakh of demonetised currency in Ramanagaram “by fabricating requisition slips”.

By late Wednesday evening, CBI managed to procure search warrants against 11 confidants of Shivakumar and Suresh. CBI conducted raids yesterday morning in five locations belonging to four people. One of the prime accused in the case, against whom a search warrant was secured, is Suresh’s PA Padmanabaiah.

The CBI has been pursuing the case since 2017 when the demonetisation racket was       exposed.

A local Co-operative Bank Manager in Kanakapura in     Ramanagaram district is said to have confessed during interrogation that he converted the   demonetised notes at the behest of Suresh.

Sources said that the houses of Padmanabaiah, Shivananda, Deputy Tahsildar, Nanjappa in-charge of electoral card in SDM office in Kanakapura and Election Cell office in Tahsildar’s office were part of the search.

It is alleged that 120 duplicate voter IDs were issued from the Tahsildar’s office without any request from voters between Nov. 10 and 11, 2016, which were used to exchange the notes. Demonetisation was announced on Nov. 8, 2016 and banks remained closed on Nov. 9.

These voter IDs were submitted in the bank by Padmanabaiah to exchange Rs. 10 lakh worth of demonetised notes,  the CBI alleged. These voter cards were printed by misusing the login id, hologram and facsimile stamp of the Tahsildar, the CBI alleged.

Just minutes before the raid, Shivakumar and Suresh convened a joint press conference at their Bengaluru home yesterday to allege that the search warrants had been executed and their names dragged at the behest of the Central Government and BJP.

“Just because we are from the Opposition Party and against the BJP ideology, the Centre has been harassing us, our families and our supporters. If they think they can silence us in political circles by framing false charges, they are living in a dream world,” said Shivakumar.