Former Deputy Commissioner of Bengaluru Urban and senior IAS officer BM Vijay Shankar was found dead at his residence in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
Speaking to TNM, Bengaluru Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao said, "He was found dead at his residence on Tuesday. We have registered a case of unnatural death and the matter is under investigation. Cause of death cannot be concluded as suicide yet."
Recently, Vijay Shankar was arrested for allegedly accepting bribes from the prime accused in the IMA Scam, Mohammed Mansoor Khan.
According to the South East Division Police, Vijay Shankar was alone at his home on Tuesday evening and the investigators suspect the time of death to be around 7 pm. However, his body was discovered an hour later. His body has been taken to Victoria Hospital's morgue, where an autopsy would be performed. "We will know if he ended his life or not after the post mortem report is out," a senior police official said.
In June 2019, the Special Investigating Team, which was at the time probing the Rs 2,000 crore scam perpetrated by I, Monetary Advisory owner Mohammed Mansoor Khan, had arrested Vijay Shankar on charges of corruption. The investigating officials had raided his residence in Tilak Nagar and had recovered cash worth Rs 2.5 crore, of which, the sleuths suspected that Rs 1.5 crore was money paid in bribe by Mansoor Khan to the bureaucrat. He was subsequently arrested and was out on bail.
The CBI, which took over the probe in November 2019, had booked Vijay Shankar, who was then the Deputy Commissioner for Urban Bengaluru district, when the scam broke out.
At the time, the CBI had said, "Vijay Shankar and another officer accepted illegal gratification from the Directors of IMA Group of companies. The illegal gratification was demanded and accepted by the above two public servants for forwarding a favourable report to Government in an enquiry into the illegal activities of IMA Group of Companies which was under their consideration. The illegal gratification of Rs 1.5 crore demanded by BM Vijay Shankar was delivered to a real estate agent."