It’s a season of raids down south. The CBI has been busy for more than a few months now, investigating bureaucrats, big businesses and, of course, politicians, mostly in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, with the bigger cases involving both states. The latest raid, though, was by the income-tax department, on the house of filmstar-turned-politician Chiranjeevi’s son-in-law Vishnu Prasad, in Poes Garden, Chennai. Prasad is married to Chiranjeevi’s elder daughter Sushmita.
The cases the CBI is investigating are of wider scope and greater complexity. But the income-tax department has outdone the CBI with at least one statistic: the stash of Rs 35.66 crore recovered from the house of Prasad, a Rajya Sabha MP, is bigger than any recent CBI recovery in the south. The money was found in his bedroom, packed in cartons. Also seized were promissory notes worth Rs 4 crore.
To be sure, there was a connection to Andhra Pradesh: Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam party had announced its merger with the ruling Congress in February last year, it was formalised in August and accepted by the Andhra assembly this March. As TV channels began flashing the news, Chiranjeevi protested he had nothing to do with the money and that it belonged to Prasad’s relatives. Prasad’s father L.V.R. Sivaprasad is a businessman. But the YSR Congress, its leader Jaganmohan Reddy himself enmeshed in CBI cases, was quick to allege that the money was for use in the Tirupati and Nellore byelections, set for June 12.
“We have always suspected that Chiranjeevi was paid off for the merger of his party with the Congress and this large cash recovery is indication enough,” says Vasireddy Padma, spokesperson for the YSR Congress. “Chiranjeevi has taken up responsibility for the Lok Sabha byelection in Tirupati. We’re sure the money was for use there. It was being kept in Chennai because Chennai is closer to Tirupati than Hyderabad.”
There are more complications for Chiranjeevi, familial and political. His other son-in-law Sirish Bharadwaj—whom his younger daughter Srija married after a dramatic elopement—is now estranged from her. He is learnt to be in talks with the YSR Congress and is said to be considering joining it. “Yes, I met Y.V. Subba Reddy (Jagan’s maternal uncle) and expressed my willingness to serve the people,” Sirish told Outlook. “But as of now the stage is not set for anything.”
The cases the CBI is chasing, as is well known, are a tangle involving the Reddy mining barons of Bellary, Jaganmohan, and former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa. The raids on Jaganmohan, which began in August last year, involve some 70 firms and individuals. The thrust of the cases against Jaganmohan is that businesses that benefited from his late father Y.S. Rajasekara Reddy’s government policies invested in Jaganmohan’s firms as a quid pro quo. One of the Bellary barons, Gali Janardhana Reddy, involved in the Obalapuram mining case, was the tourism minister of Karnataka in Yediyurappa’s ministry. He is now in jail.
The case against Yediyurappa is that his family received kickbacks from the South West Mining Company in return for clearance of mining licences. These were allegedly paid to a trust run by Yediyurappa’s family. The FIR also names his sons Vijayendra and Raghavendra, and his son-in-law Sohan Kumar.
Of late, there has been a clamour for the arrest of both Jaganmohan, prime accused in three CBI chargesheets, and Yediyurappa. With the forthcoming bypolls to one Lok Sabha and 18 assembly seats in Andhra, things might be easy for Jaganmohan, at least out of fear of the sympathy vote going in his favour. Yediyurappa, however, is shoring up his defences. He has been praising Sonia Gandhi of late. On May 16, after raids on his house, he filed for anticipatory bail.
