Nalgonda: Spurious seeds racket busted, 23 arrested

Nalgonda: The district police busted inter-State spurious seeds racket and arrested a gang of 23 persons in Nalgonda and seized 15 quintals cotton seeds worth Rs 30 lakh from their possession.

Briefing the media about the racket at DPO office meeting hall here on Tuesday, SP AV Ranganath said the kingpins of the spurious cotton seeds racket were Madhusudhan Reddy Hussain Pera and Sai alias Hussein Sab, and other members were identified as Narsimhulu Goud of Jogulamba Gadwal district, Parvathalu, M Lingaiah, Yadagiri, G Shankar, Bhagavanth, S Ramesh, Nagaraju and Shoban of Nalgonda district, Chinna Reddy, Mahipal Reddy, Jaipal Reddy, Peddi Reddy and Sandeep Reddy of Nagarkurnool district, SK Rajashekar of Mahabubnagar district, Balaswamy and Ramesh of Khammam district.

They formed a team and has been operating fake seeds' racket from Nandyala of Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. Some of the arrested were running seeds shops at their places and were cheating farmers.

The SP informed that the entire racket was busted after two persons of the team were arrested in Chandur, who disclosed the names of other members during police quizzing. The kingpins Madhusudha Reddy, Hussein Pera and Sai alias Hussein Sab were involved in preparing and marketing fake cotton seeds under brand names of Akshara and Indigo, he explained.

The trio with the help of other gang members were selling spurious cotton seeds in both Telugu speaking States.

Police seized a car and a truck and 12 cell phones from their possession during the arrest and examining the possibility of invoking PD Act against them.