Land documents, 11 kg gold seized from tainted officer

Visakhapatnam: The ACB officials seized original documents from Town and Country Planning Director GV Raghu, who was recently arrested in disproportionate assets case. The officials on Monday recovered all the documents from the house of a close aide of Raghu in Vijayawada. The breakthrough came after three-day interrogation of the officer.

ACB Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) K Ramakrishna Prasad said that following a series of raids over various government officials across the State during the last couple of months, the accused Raghu suspecting that he would be the next target, packed all the important documents of his assets in a bag and gave it to his aide T Mohan Kumar, a resident of Vijayawada, for safe custody.

Mohan Kumar once worked as a personal secretary to former Mayor of Vijayawada Anuradha and that is where he met him and later acted as his benami, DSP said. Apart from the original documents, cash of Rs 50 lakh and 11 kg gold and a few other documents of lands in Chittoor and Krishna were also recovered at his aunt Gayathri Devi’s house.

During the interrogation, Raghu also revealed how he had procured the assets through money laundering. The DSP said that Raghu befriended one D Subba Rao, resident of Vijayawada and owner of a renowned shopping mall in the city.

"Raghu and Subba Rao met when there were a few issues pertaining to the mall with Vijayawada Municipal Corporation and they became friends. In all the documents he had procured, Raghu used to give currency notes and in return, got cheques and demand drafts to purchase assets. Subsequently these assets are to be shown as firms which were in the name of Gayathri,” he added.