BANGALORE: Those accused of defrauding the gullible are, in some cases, charitable at least to cover up their wrongdoings. Those who were operating Viniv Inc., a finance company accused of defrauding people of hundreds of crores of rupees, had an eleemosynary side to them. The closure of the private finance company, following complaints of large-scale fraud and the arrest of some of its key operators, has had its adverse impact at least in one case.

The Karnataka Welfare Association for the Blind at Seshadripuram, here, one of the major organisations engaged in training and helping the blind for employment, has been badly affected. According to association leaders, Viniv Inc. was providing them assistance of Rs. 1.56 lakh each month from October 2004, and the association received such assistance on eight occasions, till May 2005. The largesse from the company was helping the association meet the salary bill of the employees.

Parashivamurthy, a lecturer in English at the Government College at Malleswaram, who is one of the leading members of the association, said that following the police raid on the finance company, the assistance has stopped.

Mr. Murthy, who is blind, told The Hindu the association has to look for a new benefactor, and it has been their bitter experience that such persons are few. There are also those who try to hoodwink them. Mr. Parashivamurthy has appealed to philanthropists to come to the aid of the association.

As to how Viniv Inc. came to be interested in their organisation, Mr. Parashivamurthy said that a write-up in a Kannada daily on the association was behind it.

A celebrated case

As regards fraudsters and philanthropy is the celebrated case of B.N. Gopala Rao, who duped thousands of people in princely Mysore in the 1940s by offering fancy attractive rates of interest on their deposits with him. The Maharaja's government had conferred the title of "Dharmarathnakara' on Gopala Rao, who was earlier a clerk in the Imperial Bank of India.

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