The Enforcement Directorate on Friday grilled former Telugu Desam Party MP J C Diwakar Reddy’s brother and Tadipatri municipal chairman J C Prabhakar Reddy for over nine hours in connection with the alleged transport scam.
The ED authorities, who had conducted raids on the residences and offices of Prabhakar Reddy in June last, questioned him for several hours over registration of BS-III vehicles as BS-IV thereby misleading the Road Transport Authority.
Reddy told reporters that the ED had questioned him about the purchase of old vehicles, but he made it clear that he had not indulged in any kind of money laundering.
“There were no irregularities on behalf of my company,” he said.
He said he had answered all the queries raised by the ED and agreed to appear before them again for interrogation.
“They treated me well with respect. Whenever they call me, I shall go as I think it is an opportunity for me to prove my honesty,” he said.
Reddy wondered why the ED had not booked cases against those who had bought the Ashok Leyland vehicles.
“This is not a multi-crore scam. Secondly, I have nothing to do with the purchase of buses. So, I am not afraid of any cases,” he said.
Prabhakar 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. The Road Transport Authority (RTA) authorities seized these vehicles.
The JC brothers were charged with getting registered the buses of BS-III category illegally by showing them as BS-IV and were run for the last three years, before they were seized.
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.
The police registered 27 FIRs in Anantapur and three in Kurnool against the JC brothers. Later, the RTA authorities wrote to the Centre to blacklist the company and order a probe. The latest raid is believed to be part of the investigation, sources said.