Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
Bengaluru, Nov 8: The police officials attached to the central crime branch (CCB) here have now been actively looking for former minister, Gali Janardhan Reddy, who once was running a mining fiefdom at Ballari. The police also are aggressively searching for Reddy's elusive personal assistant, Ali Khan, relating to a money laundering case.
The police have reasons to suspect that Reddy might fly out of the country. So they are in the process of getting legal advice on the desirability of issuing lookout notice for Reddy. The police want to question Janardhan Reddy on the issue of his assistant having collected 57 kg of gold bullions from a Ballari-based jeweller.
The CCB police stumbled on Reddy's involvement in a money laundering case when investigating fraud amounting to Rs 600 crore involving about 15,000 clients relating to a company named Ambidant having its office at Dearajeevanahalli in the city in which the investors of the company were taken for a ride. 21 cases have been registered against the company and three against its owners. Owners of the company, identified as Syed Fareed Ahmed and his son, Syed Afaq Ahmed, were arrested and then released on bail. Their modus operandi was to offer high returns on investment initially and then cheat the investors after the clientele base grew.
During the time the police conducted verification of accounts of the father-son duo, they found that Rs 18 crore had been transferred from an account to a city-based jeweller, Ambika Sales Corporation. Its proprietor, Ramesh Kothari, said he had bought gold bullions from a Ballari-based jeweller, Ramesh, who owns Rajmahal Fancy Jewellers there. The police also came to know that 57 kg gold was handed over to Ali Khan, personal assistant of Janardhan Reddy. The police got evidence to show that Fareed and Afaq had met Janardhan Reddy at Taj West End Hotel here in March this year.
City police commissioner, Sunil Kumar, said that the police will question Reddy on the money laundering case and Ali Khan. He confessed that the gold in question is yet to be recovered. On the timing of the case surfacing a day after the election results were announced, additional commissioner of police, Alok Kumar, said that if the case had been revealed earlier, it would have been politicized and therefore the police chose to make it public after waiting for sometime as per the advice of senior officers in the department.