The Central Bureau of Investigation has booked a fraud case against former CBI director K. Vijayarama Rao’s son Srinivas Kalyan, managing director of Best & Crompton Engineering Projects Ltd, based in Chennai. The charge is of cheating three banks—Central Bank of India, Chennai branch of Rs 124 crore; Corporation Bank, Chennai, of Rs 120 crore; and Andhra Bank in Hyderabad of Rs 60 crore—by furnishing false documents and forged invoices since 2013.
The CBI officers conducted a raid on the house of Srinivas Kalyan in Banjara Hills in Hyderabad on Monday and Tuesday and are expected to conduct more searches later.
Srinivas Kalyan has been named as an accused under IPC Sections 120 B (conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 468 and 471 (related to forgery and submission of false documents) in the case filed based on a complaint lodged by the Central Bank of India’s Nungambakam branch in Chennai in October 2015. Although the CBI has not arrested him so far, the CBI has told him to be available for interrogation by the first week of March. Srinivas Kalyan is ready to share all the details of the case with the CBI officials when the interrogation takes place, his younger sister Annapurna told The Sunday Guardian.
Vijayarama Rao, who worked as the CBI chief during the tenure of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, later joined TDP and became a minister in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet between 1999 and 2004. Rao was the president of TDP’s Hyderabad city unit until recently, but joined the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi in December along with Annapurna. Annapurna alleged that a TDP leader may be behind the fraud. “We cannot rule out some hidden enemies in TDP who are not happy with my father’s decision to leave the party and join TRS. We will expose all those who are behind the scam and forced my brother to resort to this crime,” she said.
Annapurna claimed, “We, including my brother are from a middle class family and we don’t have the capacity to hide hundreds of crores of rupees. In fact, my brother sold his share in a hatchery at Kakinada to perform his daughter’s marriage last year.”
Srinivas Kalyan has been accused of submitting false documents showing that Best and Crompton bagged some big infrastructure orders from seven companies to obtain the loans—Agrigold Infrastructure, Coastal Projects, Agarwal Projects, Alankrita Infratech, Akruti Infra, Patel Engineering and Birla Aircon infrastructure. Now it appears that the documents are false as some of the companies mentioned on the list are under the police scanner. The chairman and managing director of Agrigold are in jail in another case of corporate fraud.