ACB to grill Balakrishna’s ‘benamis’ on Feb 14

Hyderabad: The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) will on Wednesday start interrogating the alleged benamis — Bharath, Satyanarayana and Bharani — of former senior HMDA and RERA official Shiva Balakrishna in an asset case.

The trio received orders to appear for questioning, even as the ACB directed the Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri collector to freeze properties and papers registered in the name of Balakrishna and his family members.

Meanwhile, Balakrishna’s brother Naveen Kumar, who is under judicial remand in the same case, could move for a bail petition in the ACB court soon.

Simultaneously, the ACB is also working on building a case against an IAS officer, who was named by Balakrishna, with appropriate government permissions.

Following ACB’s directions to the Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri collector to put a hold on "any and all financial accords on Shiva Balakrishna’s and his family’s properties in the district", the collector ordered the tahsildar and the sub-registrar to freeze all property registrations, Dharani mutations and issuance of property passbooks related to the accused and his family.

In the preliminary investigation, the ACB estimated Balakrishna’s land ownership in the village to be around eight acres of agricultural farmland. However, further investigation revealed he allegedly owned 57 acres, registered in his family members’ names, valued at around Rs 35 crore. The investigation revealed that some of the properties were also issued with passbooks.

Around eight acres were registered to S. Hariprasad under survey numbers 96, 98 and 99 in Valigonda mandal’s Narsapuram village. In comparison, another 11.3 acres were registered to S. Raghu Devi name in 100 and 101 survey by-numbers, and 3.31 acres of property were identified under the title of S. Padmavati in Chittapur village with survey number 32.

In Chinna Ravupalli village of Bibinagar mandal, a half-acre property is listed under Shiva Aruna’s name at 44E1/2 survey number. At the same time, 26.08 acres are registered to Shiva Naveen Kumar in Mothkur mandal’s Palagudu village under survey numbers 31, 32 and 33.

In Shiva Kumar’s name, 8.84 acres were identified in Valigonda mandal’s Redlarepaka village under survey numbers 500, 503, 504, 505, 506 and 527.

While the properties in Redlarepaka were registered in 2009, the rest of the properties were all registered in the 2021-2023 period.