Chennai: A 42-year-old US citizen of Indian origin is now running from pillar to post to get back Rs 2.18 crore he claims to have given to the then DMK MP J.K. Rithesh in January 2014. Chennai CCB, which handles white-collar crimes, has not even summoned the politician despite a High court order directing the cops to look into the case and report.
"We are verifying the documents submitted by the complainant. We also have to independently collect certain documents. The process is on," said Inspector Vijyaraghavan of Chennai city crime branch, when this newspaper contacted him.
The victim, S.Athinarayanan, who lost all the money he saved working in the US feels that the police had been taking the case very lightly. "My first complaint was never probed properly. Now, even after getting a direction from HC asking the police to probe the case last month, the police had not even bothered to summon the former MP," the software consultant laments.
Interestingly, Rithesh had given his victim three cheques of Rs 1 crore each and all the three had bounced. The case dealing with the bounced cheques is going on in Poonamalee court.
Elaborating on how he ended up paying so much money to the former MP, Aathinarayan pointed out that he was made to believe in the clout of the politician.
"He took me to Delhi and introduced me to a few MPs. He advised me about possible investments. All this happened in a time span of two weeks after I met him for the first time in January 2014. He took money - cheques in the names of his associates - in multiple installments promising great returns. Within a few months I found his promises were not taking shape and I started asking him to return the money," he disclosed.
"As I had given the money from my foreign exchange savings, he agreed to pay '3crore and issued the 3 cheques last year. All the three bounced," Athinarayanan said.
When contacted, the former DMK MP, now with AIADMK, said that Athinarayanan was his friend's brother. "I have not received money from him. The bounced cheques he is talking about could be from my cheque leaves, which went missing. I have also lodged a police complaint about the missing cheque leaves," Rithesh claimed.
But Athinarayan said he collected the cheques from Rithesh personally. "Being a US citizen, I had great hope in the police. But nothing seems to be moving despite a HC order. I was planning to settle in Chennai and do a start-up business. With all my money gone, I may think about going back to US," he said.
