Hyderabad: Two persons, who impersonated as MLAs, collected nearly Rs 11,75,000 from the business firms of Jeedimetla and Kukatpally, including Rs 8 lakh from Aurobindo Pharma and Rs 2 lakh from Virchow Labs.
The duo, Rakesh Reddy and Mahesh Kumar, used the names of Qutbullapur MLA K.P. Vivekananda, Kukatpally MLA M. Krishna Rao and Telugu Yuvatha state president T. Veerender Goud, to extort money from the victims.
Police said the two, K. Rakesh Reddy, a businessman and C. Mahesh Kumar a private sector employee, were friends. In order to make money they decided to extort money from businessmen using the names of public representatives.
Rakesh used call the victims and introduce himself as an MLA and demand money for party funds. Mahesh used to collect the money from the victims.
Nearly Six months ago, Rakesh called the vice chairman of Aurobindo Pharma, Mr Nityananda Reddy, and introduced himself as the Telugu Yuvatha state president of Telangana and demanded Rs 8 lakh from him. Mahesh collected the amount from him.
“SImilarly they collected money from a chemical company owned by Mr Chandramouli, Deepak Nitrates, Saraswathi Chemicals and Virchow Labs amounting to nearly Rs 11.75 lakh,” said Madhapur DCP Karthikeya Sharma.
Last Sunday, Rakesh called Mr Bhaskar Rao, the partner of Green Bawarchi at Kukatpally and on Monday called Mr Leela Kumar, the owner of Kalaniketan and demanded Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively.
Based on a complaint, a case was registered at the Kukatpally police station. Rakesh and Mahesh were arrested and cops recovered Rs 1.5 lakh from them. The arrested men were remanded to custody.
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