The beleaguered YSR Congress Party of Jaganmohan Reddy has found itself in the middle of a major controversy over the revelation that one of its leaders having spent Rs 2.20 crore on party programmes by robbing a bank.
The story has become rather popular since the arrest of party leader Gujju Sridhar Reddy accused to be the mastermind behind the robbery of Rs 7.31 crore of the State Bank of India from the office of a private security agency in Rajahmundry last month.
The 11 member gang involved in the case also murdered an employee P Srinivas, who was hanged form the ceiling fan to make it look like a suicide. The Rajahmundry Ubran district police have arrested 11 people including the four main accused Gujju Sridhar Reddy, S Srinu , Kadali Venkateshwara Rao and Sujju Kumar Reddy and have charged them with murder and robbery.
The entire amount of Rs 7.31 crore was not robbed in one single instance. As the former employee of the security agency responsible for loading currency notes in the ATMs, Sridhar Reddy had diverted Rs 5.30 crore over the last one year and an amount of Rs 58 lakh was taken from the company chest on the night of the crime.
District superintendent of police T Ravikumar Murthy said that Sridhar Reddy nursed an ambition to become deputy mayor of Kakinanda town of East Godavari district and used the bank money to promote the activities of YSR Congress party. He spent Rs 50 lakh during the Padyatra of Sharmila, sister of party president Jaganmohan Reddy.
The police have recovered Rs 74.71 lakh in cash, gold ornaments worth Rs 15.82 lakhs and documents worth Rs 95.76 lakhs. The kingpin had also invested an amount of Rs 70 lakh to finance a Telugu film produced by his friend Allu Venkat. During their probe, the gang revealed that even murdered employee Srinivas was hand in glove with them and had taken Rs 1 crore of the heist. The police were now investigating the possible involvement of some of the employees of the SBI as they had failed to notice the missing cash over such a long period of time.