Cash, gold and silver continue to rain in Andhra Pradesh, which has already broken all the records of seizure of money by the poll authorities.
In the biggest single seizure, police recovered unaccounted cash of `8.3 crore from a duo coming from Bengaluru in a private bus and were looking for a city-based jeweller Anurag Gupta in this connection.Based on the interrogation, the police officials believe that the cash seized was to be used in the campaign of a lok Sabha candidate in the State. However, they did not divulge the name of the candidate.
This is an addition to the `108 crore already recovered by the authorities during the search operation over the last one and a half month.The two persons arrested have been identified as Prashant and Darshan, residents of Kachigdua area in Hyderabad. Police also recovered `14.5 lakh from the residence of Prashant. They also confessed that they had brought an amount of `4 crore from Bengaluru earlier this week and handed it over to Sukesh Gupta, brother of Anurag Gupta, owner of Musaddilal Bhagwat Swaroop or MBS Jewellers.
The duo revealed that they had gone to Bengaluru at the behest of Anurag Gupta and took the cash from one Vijaya Kumar on the basis of a code word. “They booked four seats in a private bus and kept the seven bags containing cash on the sleeper seats and slept on them during the journey,” Cyberabad Police Commissioner CV Anand said.
A special operations team stopped the bus near Shamshabad and during the search found the bags with the currency notes in `1000 and `500 denomination.Police sources said that hawala gangs were involved in the transfer of this unaccounted cash to be used to bribe the voters in the elections.Sukesh Gupta had already been questioned earlier by the police in connection with the disproportionate assets case of YS Jaganmohan Reddy and was arrested on the charges of cheating Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation.
In other incidents, search operations across the State yielded more money and valuables. `11 lakh have been seized from a car at Kottapatanam in Prakasham. Four kilo of gold and one kilo of silver have also been seized from a bus in Guntakal in Anantapur. The consignment was being sent from Guntur to Bellary in neighbouring Karnataka district.