Khammam Police Arrest 18 For Aiding Rs547-cr Cyber Fraud
The case turned political after viral photos linked Potru Praveen to BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao.
Nalgonda: A story of people from remote villages — considered naive and rustic in popular narrative — joining hands to weave an inter-state fraud network, siphoning off over `540 crore over the last three years without ever catching the attention of law enforcement agencies, shocked experts and highlighted an uncomfortable truth about the emergence of fraud as a cottage industry in some pockets of the country.
The lid came off the fraud when an alert youngster, Moduga Sai Kiran of Tumburu, complained against four persons — Potru Manoj Kalyan, Potru Praveen, Udathaneni Vikas and Morampudi Chinna Keshavulu — accusing them of getting him open bank accounts for the sake of getting him a job and collecting his ATM cards, passbooks and signed cheques.
Praveen and his partner Prakash had operated a fake centre call in Madhapur since 2024 for stealing money from Australians through fraud and deception. They re-routed money up to Rs10 crore from Australians using bank accounts of Indians in Australia. However, the Cyberabad police arrested them on November 29, 2025.
After coming to know about the arrest of fraud’s kingpin Praveen, Sai Kiran lodged a complaint with the V.M. Banjar police in Khammam against Praveen and his accomplices. Investigations into the complaint which led to the unearthing of a much bigger fraud involving illegal fund transfer to the tune of Rs 547 crore between 2022 and 2025 using the mule accounts.
Following the investigation, the Khammam police arrested 18 persons on Sunday for allegedly aiding an inter-state cyber fraud racket by allowing fraudsters to misuse their bank accounts to siphon off Rs 547-crore crime money over three years between 2022 and 2025.
All the accused who rented their bank accounts on the basis of commission come from Sathupally mandal in Khammam district. Of the 17 accused, eight were from three families — Rayala Ajay Kumar, Rayala Gopi, Rayala Gopichand; Sadhu Pavan Sandeep, Sadhu Sandhya, Sadhu Sri Lekha; Kandukuri Manukantha, and Kandukuri Jagadeesh.
The other nine accused are Palla Ganesh, Thannir Mahesh, Kanchapogu Srinivas, Jonnalagadda Tirumala Sai, Thatikonda Raju, Junjuri Shiva Krishna, Vadlamudi Narendra Kumar and Malladi Shiva.
The modus operandi typically involves fraudsters getting crime money transferred to mule accounts — who have no role in the perpetration of the fraud — and later getting the money transferred to either their account or someone else’s account.
Following the investigation, the police found ₹270.66 crore out of ₹547 crore was transferred through accounts of Potru Manoj Kalyan and his family members— ₹114.18 crore through the bank account of Manoj Kalyan, ₹21 crore from his wife Medha Bhanu Priya’s account, and ₹135.48 crore through the account of his brother-in-law Medha Sateesh.
The remaining Rs 276.34 crore was transferred through the account of Bommidala Nagalakshmi (Rs 81.72 crore), Thatikonda Raju’s Narsimha Kirana and Dairy at Karimnagar (Rs 92.54 crore) and Udathaneni Vikas Chowdary (Rs 80.41 crore).
Of these persons, Potru Manoj Kalyan, Thatikonda Raju and Bommidala Nagalakshmi are from Sattupally mandal, from where all mule accounts were sourced by the international fraud kingpin Praveen.
While Praveen was arrested by the Cyberabad police on November 29 — and booked in the current case by the Khammam police, Kalyan was arrested earlier and sent to remand. Raju was arrested by the police on Sunday.
Speaking to media persons on Khammam police commissioner Sunil Dutt said Kalyan and his associates had links with international cyber fraud gangs and cheated victims across the country in the name of investments, matrimony, reward points, online gaming, cryptocurrency trading and betting.
Data from the Cyber Crime Reporting Portal showed that hundreds of complaints had been registered against the accounts of these accused.
The case, however, took a political turn after photographs of Potru Praveen with BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao went viral on social media. It also emerged that Praveen’s father, Potru Srinivas Rao, was elected sarpanch of Erra Boinapally gram panchayat as a BRS-backed candidate in the recently held panchayat elections.
