Vijayawada, Nov 28 (IANS) Former TTD chairman and YSRCP Parliamentary Party leader Y. V. Subba Reddy on Friday appeared before the SIT probing the Parakamani theft case at Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple at Tirumala.
Additional Director General, CID, Ravi Shankar Ayyanar, who is heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT), was questioning Subba Reddy at the CID office in Vijayawada.
Subba Reddy was chairman of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) when TTD employee Ravi Kumar gifted seven properties to the temple after the theft case was settled in Lok Adalat.
Former TTD chairman and former MLA B. Karunakar Reddy had appeared before SIT on November 25. He was TTD chairman when the theft case was registered.
The SIT launched the probe after the High Court issued orders on the petition challenging the closure of the Parakamani theft case in the Lok Adalat.
Ravi Kumar, an employee of TTD, was caught while stealing $920 from Parakamani (coins and currency notes counting centre) in April 2023.
The theft case registered at the Tirumala police station was transferred to the Lok Adalat, where a compromise settlement formula was reached in September 2023 after Ravi Kumar volunteered to donate seven properties worth Rs 40 crore, all of them located in Tirupati and Chennai, in the name of the TTD.
Recently, a petition was filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court alleging that there was no investigation into the theft case as the then-governing board of TTD had closed the case after a settlement in the Lok Adalat. Petitioner Macherla Sreenivas had challenged the closure of the case.
The SIT recently questioned former police officers and TTD officials as part of the investigation.
Jaganmohan Reddy, who was Circle Inspector (CI) of Police at Tirumala One Town Police Station when the case was registered in 2023, and other officials appeared before the SIT.
A former Assistant Vigilance and Security Officer (AVSO) of the TTD and complainant in the theft case, Y. Satish Kumar, was found dead under mysterious circumstances on the railway tracks at Komali village near Tadipatri in Anantapur district on November 14. Postmortem revealed that he had been hit on the back of his head with a sharp object.
Satish Kumar had caught Ravi Kumar stealing the money while counting the hundi collections.
The High Court last week ordered police to provide security to Sreenivas, on whose petition the court ordered an investigation.
–IANS
ms/svn
