CID raids houses of suspects in warehousing scam

Hyderabad: The Crime Investigation Department police on Tuesday conducted searches in the houses of nine persons, who are suspected to have played a key role in siphoning off the fixed deposits belonging to the Andhra Pradesh Warehousing Corporation, which were deposited at various branches of SBH in Hyderabad.

The scam came to light in December 2015, when the official liquidator lodged a complaint with the Cyberabad police about missing of fixed deposits worth Rs 35 crore from various banks at Ghatkesar, Malkajgiri and also at Khammam. On Tuesday, CID teams conducted simultaneous raids and searched the houses of nine suspects, mostly the retired bank officials and seized hard disks, some important documents, huge amounts of cash and bank passbooks.

Searches were conducted in the houses of former bank managers Kama Raju, Kiranmayee, Kishore Kumar Jain, Sandeep, Jaya Prasad, Prabhakar, Venkatesh and also one Tomas Alva Edison, who acted as a mediator. “Thomas has been arranging the deposits from higher ups in the administration to divert the funds and later siphon them off,” said highly placed sources.

It is learnt that the officials could not open the bank lockers of the suspects on Tuesday and searches would continue. It may be recalled that the police have earlier taken into custody of two persons including a former bank employee. The prime accused in the case, Mani Damodar has been absconding since the fraud came to light.