Within hours of the arrest of senior Telugu Desam Party legislator and former labour minister Kinjarapu Atchen Naidu by the Anti-Corruption Bureau police in connection with the multi-crore Employees State Insurance (ESI) scam, the Andhra police arrested another controversial TDP leader and former MLA J C Prabhakar Reddy in the early hours of Saturday.
The Andhra police quietly came down to Hyderabad and swooped on the residence of Prabhakar Reddy and took him into custody, along with his son J C Asmith Reddy. Both of them are being shifted to Anantapur where they would be produced before the court.
Prabhakar Reddy, brother of loudmouth TDP leader and former Anantapur MP J C Diwakar Reddy, was charged with obtaining of fake No-Objection Certificate and fake insurance papers for 154 private buses belonging to their family concern JC Travels.
Early this week, the Road Transport Authority (RTA) authorities seized as many as 154 buses belonging to JC Travels, promoted by the JC brothers.
Joint Transport Commissioner of Road Transport Authority Prasada Rao said these buses of BS-III category had been registered illegally and were being run for the last three years.
Of these 154 buses, as many as 50 buses were registered in the name of Jatadhara Industries and 104 buses in the name of C Gopal Reddy. As many as 33 buses were registered in Karnataka, 15 in Telangana and 101 in Andhra Pradesh.
“We have registered 27 FIRs in Anantapur and three in Kurnool against the JC brothers. We have also written a letter to the Centre to blacklist these vehicles in the database and give instructions to all the states to seize these buses wherever they are operated,” Prasada Rao said.
As of now, 62 vehicles belonging to JC Travels were seized till now and another 39 vehicles would be seized shortly. In Telangana, 12 vehicles were identified and information had been passed on to that state with a request to seize them.
“We have already warned those who bought vehicles from JC Travels and also identified 71 duplicate insurance policies,” Prasada Rao added.