Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, June 6: The Commissionerate Police arrested PK Iyer, vice-chairman of Deccan Chronicle Holdings limited (DCHL) from a hotel here in the wee hours of Saturday.
According to the police, Iyer was wanted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with an alleged loan fraud to the tune of Rs 350 crore. He had reportedly availed multiple short-term corporate loans by submitting fake documents in several banks in Secunderabad between 2009 and 2011.
“Our team raided a posh hotel near Jaydev Vihar and nabbed Iyer and after that we handed him over to the CBI, Bhubaneswar DCP Satyabrata Bhoi told the media.
“Iyer was residing in the hotel for the last two months using fake identity. On a tip-off from the intelligence wing of Orissa Police about Iyer’s presence in the hotel at least 10 cops went to the spot and apprehended him at 2:30am,” the DCP said.
After the Commissionerate Police handed over Iyer to the CBI, he was produced before Chief Judicial Magistrate court here Saturday after a medical test was conducted on him at Capital Hospital.
The court then allowed the CBI to take him on a two-day transit remand. He will now be produced in a magistrate court at Nampally, Hyderabad, sources said.
Police sources said Iyer was living in room No. 220 of Trident Hotel here using a fake name, Chitra Athwani, since May 17. Police sources indicated Iyer had earlier stayed in Kolkata and Port Blair in disguise.
A fraud case was registered against him by the CBI earlier. An arrest warrant was also issued against him, the central agency’s sources said.
Earlier this month, DCHL chairman Tikkavarapu Venkattram Reddy and his brother T Vinayak Ravi Reddy, who was the managing director of the company, were arrested by the central agency’s officials from Hyderabad, on charges of defrauding Canara Bank and causing it a loss of over `350 crore, according to the FIR, filed by the investigating agency.
The case was then registered under Sections 120-B r/w 420, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code. The CBI had earlier filed a criminal case against Venkatram Vinayak Ravi and PK Iyer for allegedly defrauding Canara Bank.
The CBI sources had also claimed that the agency had found evidence that the DC promoters had “deliberately hatched a conspiracy of fraudulently accumulating Rs1,230 crore from the Canara Bank over a period of four years, from 2008 to 2012.
A CBI release had earlier said that the company had submitted false and fabricated balance sheets concealing its actual
borrowings from Canara Bank’s corporate lending branch, Secunderabad and the total loss caused to bank was approximately
Rs 357.77 crore.
