Hyderabad: Woman held for fraud, extortion

Hyderabad: When a 29-year-old woman approached the Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar police on Tuesday with a complaint that her relatives were torturing her to snatch her property worth Rs 100 crore the cops took it seriously. But within a few hours the cops were stunned to find that the woman was a big fraudster and that many of her victims had approached the police.

Tandra Hema alias Shailu alias Alekya Reddy, now a resident of Rajiv Nagar had been claiming to be a joint collector and defrauding widows and low class women promising them houses and lands under government schemes. She also claimed to be a mandal revenue officer and revenue inspector and took thousands from women promising government sops.

Hema also extorted money from four men after “falling in love” with them. She lived with them for a few days and threatened to file domestic violence complaints. Some other men also became her victims after she promised them autorickshaws and government jobs.

Police thinks that she must have defrauded at least 200 people and that many of them have not approached the police. Police hopes that once media reports come out more victims will come out. The police is yet to calculate the total money she looted but they suspect it would be in lakhs.

“She took Rs 30,000 from each of her victims whom she promised houses under the Rajiv Gruha Kalpa scheme. She took Rs 4,000 to Rs 20,000 from the other victims for land and autorickshaws,” officials said.

After Hema lodged the complaint with the police one SI had a suspicion, and he ran a check. He found out that she had filed false cases against others in the past and had been shifting house constantly. She was also once remanded by the Cyberabad police. Police suspect that she tried to file a case against her relatives in order to create an impression that she was very rich or as a cover before the police started investigations against her.

“She was a school dropout in early 2000 and was doing petty jobs. Slowly she started frauds. She got married and involved her husband too in frauds. However, they broke up and she established relationships with other men who joined her frauds,” said SR Nagar inspector G.V. Ramana Goud. Hema married twice and has two children. She was booked by the SR Nagar police. The Jubilee Hills, Sanathnagar and other police stations have started investigations.