Acting on an Intelligence tip-off, the Commissionerate Police in wee hours of Saturday arrested Hyderabad-based Deccan Chronicle group vice-chairman PK Iyer from a hotel in connection with a Rs350-crore bank loan fraud case. He was handed over to local CBI officials as he had been on the run since Bengaluru CBI unit issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him on the charge of bank loan fraud.
later in the afternoon, the local Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court allowed the CBI to take Iyer on a two-day transit remand. Iyer would be produced at the Nampalli court in Hyderabad by the CBI, the court said in its order. Earlier in the day, a medical test was conducted on him at the Capital Hospital before he was produced in the court. “A police team raided a posh hotel where Iyer had been staying under a fake identity and handed over to the CBI,” said Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissioner of Police RP Sharma.
Sources said Iyer had been staying in room number 220 of the Trident Hotel under the assumed name of a woman namely Chitra Athwani since May 17. He had stayed incognito in Kolkata and Port Blair before coming to Bhubaneswar, the sources said. In July 2013, the CBI had registered cheating cases against the accused. Iyer had in 2009-11 availed multiple short-term corporate loans to the tune of Rs350 crore by submitting false financial statements from Canara Bank. In February this year, the company’s chairman T Venkatram Reddy was also arrested by the CBI in connection with the fraud.