Telangana police on Wednesday night arrested three people and seized a huge amount of cash from a farmhouse in Hyderabad that was meant to be offered to four MLAs of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to quit their party” by ‘BJP agents’, The Indian Express reported, citing officials.
The arrests come just days before the Telangana’s Munugode bypoll that is scheduled on November 3. The bypoll was necessitated after sitting MLA Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy quit the Congress to join the BJP a few months ago.
The three arrested are Sateish Sharma, alias Ramachandra Bharathi, a priest at a temple in Haryana’s Faridabad, another priest from Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati named D Simhayaji, and a Hyderabad-based businessman named Nandakumar. All the three were present at the farmhouse at Aziz Nagar in Moinabad.
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About Rs 15 crore cash was recovered from a car at the farmhouse, and the accused were in touch with MLAs Pilot Rohith Reddy, B Harshvardhan Reddy, G Balraju, and Rega Kantha Rao.
Cyberabad Police Commissioner Stephen Ravindra said that the police had acted on a tip-off from TRS MLAs who said that party members were being lured to leave the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao-led TRS party. Ravindra added that action will be taken against the accused in accordance with law and that investigation in the case is underway.
Meanwhile, TRS leaders alleged that the four MLAs were offered Rs 10 crore each by BJP agents.
The state BJP leaders have called the development as political “drama” by the Chief Minister. BJP leader and party’s national vice-president D K called it a drama by the CM KCR.