Former TDP MLA JC Prabhakar Reddy, son arrested in transport scam - Hindustan Times
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Former TDP MLA JC Prabhakar Reddy, son arrested in transport scam

Hindustan Times, Hyderabad | By
Jun 13, 2020 11:34 AM IST

The arrest of the father and son, who have been shifted to Anantapur to be produced before a court, comes a day after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) authorities arrested former minister and TDP lawmaker Kinjarapu Atchen Naidu in connection with the 2016 multi-crore Employees State Insurance (ESI) scam, when N Chandrababu Naidu was the AP chief minister.

The Andhra Pradesh (AP) Police on Saturday arrested senior Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader and former lawmaker JC Prabhakar Reddy and his son JC Asmith Reddy for alleged irregularities in their private transport business based on a complaint filed at Anantapur town-1 police station by the state road transport authority (RTA) officials earlier this week.

Prabhakar Reddy, who represented Tadipatri assembly constituency in Anantapur district till last year, is the younger brother of another senior TDP leader and former member of parliament (MP), JC Diwakar Reddy.(HT Archives. Representative image)
Prabhakar Reddy, who represented Tadipatri assembly constituency in Anantapur district till last year, is the younger brother of another senior TDP leader and former member of parliament (MP), JC Diwakar Reddy.(HT Archives. Representative image)

The arrest of the father and son, who have been shifted to Anantapur to be produced before a court, comes a day after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) authorities arrested former minister and TDP lawmaker Kinjarapu Atchen Naidu in connection with the 2016 multi-crore Employees State Insurance (ESI) scam, when N Chandrababu Naidu was the AP chief minister.

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Atchen Naidu was produced before a magistrate of the ACB special court in Vijayawada on early Saturday morning and remanded to judicial custody for 14 days.

Prabhakar Reddy, who represented Tadipatri assembly constituency in Anantapur district till last year, is the younger brother of another senior TDP leader and former member of parliament (MP), JC Diwakar Reddy. They are popularly known as “JC Brothers” and runs the lucrative transport business, called Diwakar Travels and JC Travels, across the country.

Earlier on Tuesday, the RTA officials seized 154 buses, belonging to JC Travels, which were allegedly bought by the accused from the Hinduja Group-owned Ashok Leyland as scrap and operated as commercial bus service in Anantapur district.

Prasada Rao, joint transport commissioner, RTA, AP, told media persons that these buses belong to the Bharat Stage (BS)-III category, whose nationwide sale was banned by the Supreme Court (SC) from April 1, 2017, and had been registered illegally in 2018 by forging documents.

The accused registered 50 and 104 buses in the names of Jatadhara Industries and C Gopal Reddy, respectively, Rao said.

The RTA officials have also unearthed that 33, 15, and 101 buses were registered in Karnataka, Telangana, and AP, respectively.

“We’ve filed 27 FIRs (first information reports) in Anantapur and three in Kurnool against the ‘JC Brothers’. We’ve also written to the Centre to blacklist these vehicles and give instructions to all the states to seize these buses wherever they’re being operated,” Rao said.

So far, the RTA authorities have seized 62 vehicles belonging to JC Travels and another 39 are likely to be confiscated soon.

The AP authorities have requested their counterparts in neighbouring Telangana to seize 12 vehicles belonging to JC Travels at the earliest.

“We’ve warned those, who bought the vehicles from JC Travels and also identified 71 duplicate insurance policies,” Rao added.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Srinivasa Rao is Senior Assistant Editor based out of Hyderabad covering developments in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana . He has over three decades of reporting experience.

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