Bengaluru: Elite recreational clubs in Bengaluru, whose members include many eminent personalities, are taking steps to ensure that lockers provided to members to keep sporting goods are not misused for storage of unaccounted cash and other valuables.
The audit comes after Bowring Institute, a premier recreational facility established in 1868, stumbled upon hundreds of crores of rupees worth of property papers, cash, gold and diamonds among other valuables in many of its lockers.
Private vaults in clubs have come under the tax department’s anti-evasion drive in recent months. The department conducted searches in private vaults after months of research and evidence gathering.
In January, a private vault in Delhi’s South Extension area was searched and cash and jewellery were seized.
With bank lockers seemingly difficult to obtain, the incident at Bowring raises questions on whether spaces within such clubs have become alternative storage facilities for unaccounted wealth, largely due to their lack of monitoring.
The Bowring management had decided to break open the locks of around 126 of the 682 lockers. Three of them belonging to a city-based businessman Avinash Amarlal Kukreja contained property papers, estimated to be valued over Rs 500 crore, cash and gold of around Rs 4 crore and other valuables including signed blank cheques, according to media reports.
“We have now informed the members, that henceforth any member who wishes to avail the locker facility will have to give a declaration stating that other than sports attire (or related items), we will not place anything else in the locker,” H. S. Srikanth, secretary of Bowring Institute said. He added that the club would now provide the locks to lockers and retain a key to avoid misuse.
The news of unaccounted valuables in club lockers surfaced shortly after the Income Tax department and other authorities unearthed several crores in cash and equivalents in the run up to the recent Karnataka assembly elections, that was believed to be linked to top politicians of the state.
Other than increasing surveillance like CCTV and beefing up security, clubs who have the luxury of private spaces that limit entry to non-members, are also coming up with rules where they would jointly hold control over such locker facilities to avoid a repeat of Bowring Institute-type misuse.
Kukreja also had two lockers in the 150-year old Bangalore Club. Following the Bowring incident, Kukreja opened the lockers along with the enforcement authorities, but nothing was found.
“As of now, we have nothing specific but we allot lockers based on members’ request and availability. We have no routine checking system. Now with this experience, maybe in due course, we will be considering it,” said a senior office bearer of Bangalore Club, requesting anonymity.
Century Club, in the Cubbon Park area, has called for an office bearers’ meeting later this week to discuss an audit of its lockers and putting measures to increase monitoring.
Relatively newer clubs like Indiranagar Club have had such checks for a while now.
Former Additional Director General of Police B.N.S.Reddy, president of the Indiranagar Club said that there is no ownership of lockers within its premises. He said members are expected to use the locker and then empty it when they leave.
“Club members are expected to ensure that lockers are not misused to store illegal items. Clubs have to do a re-think on how they monitor such facilities and misuse by members that give a bad name to the institution itself,” said T.V Mohandas Pai, prominent Bengalurean and chairman, Manipal Global Education Services Pvt. Ltd.
Gireesh Chandra Prasad from Delhi contributed to the story.