Chennai: The XI special CBI court for bank fraud cases granted two days police custody of mining baron J. Shekhar Reddy and his associates V. Srinivasalu and auditor Prem Kumar. The court, however, denied police custody to two other associates of Reddy — Dindigul Rathinam and Muthupettai Ramachandran and remanded them to judicial custody till January 17.
When the matter came up for hearing, special public prosecutor for the CBI said that while people were facing difficulty in securing new currency notes, Reddy and his associates were in possession of a huge number of such notes.
So further investigation was required to identify the people involved in the illegal conversion.
The CBI had registered an FIR against Reddy, Srinivasalu, Premkumar, Dindigul Rathinam and Muthupettai Ramachandran, on charges of illegally converting new currency worth Rs 34 crore. Later, Kolkatta based realtor Parasmal Lodha was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in Mumbai last month and brought to Chennai.
On Tuesday, special judge K Venkataswamy granted two days police custody of J. Shekhar Reddy, V Srinivasulu and Prem Kumar. The ED also requested the judge to transfer the case pertaining to Lodha from the XI CBI court to the principal court for CBI cases. Conceding the request, the judge transferred the case to the principal court for CBI cases.
