Former Lok Sabha member from Araku parliamentary constituency and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kothapalli Geetha was on Wednesday arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with a bank fraud case.
According to reports, the CBI reportedly took her into custody after midnight in Hyderabad and shifted her to Bengaluru on Wednesday.
She was charged with defrauding Punjab National Bank to the extent of Rs 42.79 crore in 2015.
Sources said her husband Ramakoteshwar Rao also might be arrested in the same case. Both of them might be produced before the local court in Bengaluru and sent to judicial remand.
Geetha, who was elected from YSR Congress party ticket in 2014 general elections, later turned a rebel and kept away from the party. She made an attempt to join the Telugu Desam Party but did not get an entry.
She later announced that she would float her own party, but did not do it. In June 2019, she joined the BJP, but has not been very active in the party since then.
In 2015, the CBI filed a charge sheet against Geetha in connection with the alleged bank fraud.
The agency alleged that the former MP, in collusion with Ramakoteswara Rao, then managing director of Hyderabad-based Visweswara Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, misrepresented facts to Punjab National Bank and got a short term loan of Rs 25 crore sanctioned and disbursed.
“The accused persons diverted the loan amount for purposes other than it was sanctioned for and allegedly cheated the Punjab National Bank, resulting in a loss of Rs 42.79 crore to the bank,” the CBI said in the charge sheet.
It is alleged that the entire case took place in collusion with bank officers K K Aravindakshan, the then general manager, head office, Punjab National Bank; and B K Jayaprakasam, then assistant general manager and then branch manager who have also been named in the chargesheet filed before special CBI court in Hyderabad.
Geetha was booked under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (Cheating), 468 (forgery) and 471 of IPC and U/s 13(2) r/w 13(1)(d) of the PC Act, 1988.
Geetha had said then that she, along with a Singaporean firm Keppel Land, took a loan of Rs 25 crore in 2009 to develop and promote a 53-acre township at Rayadurgam near Moosapet on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
She alleged that the charge sheet was “political vendetta and aimed at tarnishing her reputation.”