Hyderabad: A 45-year-old businessman who called himself the chairman of the National Consumer Rights Forum and the founder chairman of All India Anti-Corruption Forum, was arrested by the police for cheating. The businessman, M. Venkatalaxmi Nageshwar charged Rs 1,500 for membership and Rs 5,000 for lifetime membership. He was planning to extort money from companies, police said.
Police said Nageshwar set up a trust and registered it in New Delhi with Rs 5,000 stating that his outfits will create awareness among consumers about their rights and about corruption among the public. He said that he was launching a movement to eradicate corruption from government departments and was planning to form state and district level committees by collecting Rs 1,500 from individuals as membership fees.
He later fixed Rs 30,000 to Rs 2 lakh for appointing presidents and other persons for a two-year period. “He was planning to collect Rs 5 crore every year.” after setting up the bodies, take up consumer issues and extort money from corporates. He also wanted to contact top government officials and extort money from them," SOT additional DCP E. Ramchandra Reddy said.
As per his plan, he registered a firm named Telugu Prapancham and collected huge amounts from businessmen saying that he was authorised by the government to change the name boards of schools and other government institutions into Telugu. "He also carried the copy of the ID of a CID DSP which he uses for free access at toll gates and government offices. He also has the identity card of B4u news channel and another one as treasurer of Film and TV development chamber and used it to extort money," the additional DCP added.
In the same way, he lured one K. Nagaraju and issued an ID card to him as member and made him in-charge of Telangana and assigned him the responsibility of Telangana and other districts. Believing this, Nagaraju also admitted 14 members, but later realised the fraud and informed the police. Nageshwar was arrested and sent to judicial custody.
