Hyderabad: In what could mean fresh trouble for former chief executive officer of TV9, V. Ravi Prakash, investigators have unearthed “questioned documents” pertaining to the allegations of forgery, from among the 12 hard disks that were seized from the company’s office during searches on May 10.
The Cyberabad Police has received the first set of findings of the Telangana State Forensic Laboratory (TSFL), in the form of a 20-page report that was prepared after sifting through huge data stored in about six of the 12 hard disks.
The remaining six hard disks are still to be analysed and it could take another three weeks before the second set of findings are received.
“We had requested the FSL to trace certain incriminating documents and those documents have been traced,” was all that a Cyberabad police official would tell this newspaper. When specifically asked whether the documents were forged, sources reiterated that the “questioned documents” have been found and declined to disclose anything. “Based on the initial report of the FSL, we are on the job of chalking out our next course of action,” an official in Cyberabad police said.
It is learnt that the questioned documents are regarding the `20 lakh worth of shares purchased by Tollywood actor Shivaji. Using the same documents, the accused approached the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) asking it not to allow the new management to take over the Associated Broadcasting Company (of which Ravi Prakash is the CEO).
The fresh findings could mean more trouble for Ravi Prakash, who has been questioned by a team of Cyberabad police a few times.
Recently, senior Supreme Court counsel Harin Raval, appearing for the Telangana police, had told the High Court that it was necessary to take Mr Ravi Prakash into custody since he was not cooperating with the investigation and not disclosing any information pertaining to the case. The matter will come up for hearing next Tuesday.
Sources said that the investigators are likely to call Mr Ravi Prakash for questioning once again and will confront him with the questioned documents, which the forensic experts were able to lay their hands on after a painstaking investigation, as they sifted through the hard disks containing huge data, using high end forensic tools.
Using the “forensic dossier” imaging tool, they were able to zero in on the documents, which allegedly contained the alleged forged signatures. The forensic dossier can capture data from one or two suspect drives to either one or two evidence drives simultaneously.
“This enables us to quickly acquire potential evidence from multiple suspect hard drives and create multiple copies of the suspect drive to speed up the analysis,” they said.
A Forensic Tool Kit (FTK), a computer forensics software which can locate deleted emails and scan a hard disk for text strins to use them as a password dictionary to crack encryption, was also used.
Repeated calls from this newspaper to Cyberabad police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar remained unanswered.
On April 24, the Cyber Crime police of Cyberabad received a complaint against Ravi Prakash and others from P. Kaushik Rao, director of Alanda Media and Entertainments Private Limited, alleging that false documents had been created by forging signatures for illegal gain. Besides conducting searches at the house and office of Mr Ravi Prakash, the Cyberabad police also conducted searches at the house of Shivaji in Himayatnagar and a few others.
Police had registered a case under IPC Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery for harming reputation), 471 (using forged record as genuine) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) and Sections 66 and 72 of IT Act against the accused.
