Andhra police arrest TDP leader JC Prabhakar Reddy, son

Andhra Pradesh police on early Saturday arrested Opposition Telugu Desam Party senior leader JC Prabhakar Reddy and his son Asmith Reddy for their alleged role in irregularities involving fraudulent conversion of B3 emission standard vehicles into B4 compliant vehicles.
This comes a day after the Andhra anti-corruption bureau (ACB) sleuths arresting the TDP's deputy floor leader in Assembly Kinjarapu Atchannaidu on Friday morning for his alleged involvement in a multi-crore medical purchases scam at ESI hospitals.

TDP national president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu condemned the arrests and termed it as yet another instance of chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s intolerance and vindictive attitude towards the Opposition with retrograde politics.

AP police alleged that the transport companies belonging to JC Prabhakar Reddy and his son Asmith Reddy purchased buses as scrap that were not roadworthy and forged documents to show the vehicles as roadworthy to ply them in Andhra.

The police said these buses were registered in other states and brought to Andhra after obtaining no-objection certificates to ply them illegally, endangering human lives, violating the road safety and air pollution laws. The offences also involved producing fake invoices and fake insurance policies for registration of vehicles with the Road Transport Authority, said the police.

Condemning the arrests, TDP national president Chandrababu Naidu said chief minister Reddy was turning increasingly impatient and frustrated over growing public support for the Opposition’s agitations against the ruling YSR Congress’s excesses in sand, land, wine, mine, cement, coronavirus kits, among others.

Naidu said the YSR Congress government was attempting to divert the public attention from its miserable failures during one year of rule. “False cases were being filed and arrests were being made to harass and weaken the TDP leaders politically and financially,” alleged the TDP supremo, adding that his party would confront the political oppression and continue its people’s movements to expose anti-people policies of the YSR Congress government.

G. Deepak Reddy, TDP’s member of legislative council, accused the Reddy government of filing false cases and arresting the Opposition leaders who were not surrendering to the inducements and threats to shift loyalties. He termed the arrests of Opposition leaders as politically motivated. In fact, he said, the transport companies of JC Prabhakar Reddy’s family were victims of a fraud committed by a Chennai-based agent and that they had filed cases against the fraudsters, which are now pending before the Nagaland High Court.

JC Prabhakar Reddy has obtained bails in 23 out of 24 cases slapped against him by the Andhra police since January this year and the 24th case was coming up for hearing on Monday, said TDP leaders.