The Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths on Thursday continued their investigation into the money laundering case involving mining baron Gali Janardhana Reddy and his personal assistant Ali Khan with a series of searches on their residences in Bengaluru and Ballari.
CCB sleuths claimed to have seized incriminating documents from Reddy’s house on Race Course Road which was locked and had no guards. The sleuths took locksmiths with them to open the doors and conduct searches. The search was videographed by CCB.
The police also skimmed through CCTV footage of the house to check on the visitors, but nothing conclusive came up, said CCB sources.
“We visited Janardhana Reddy’s house and seized documents pertaining to the case. We have not found anything from the CCTV footage. We were forced to issue a search warrant as we had to seize the documents and get more details on the gold,” said S Girish, DCP (Crime).
Meanwhile, another team headed to Ali Khan’s house in R T Nagar and conducted searches. There too, the police seized a few documents and asked one of the family members to accompany them for clarifications on the documents. A family member of Ali Khan roughed up a few people from the media, objecting to being photographed and videographed.
Searches in Ballari
Meanwhile, simultaneous searches were carried out at Janardhana Reddy’s house and office in Molakalmuru and Kuteera on Havambhavi road. Initially, Reddy’s mother-in-law Nagalakshmi shouted at the CCB officials in Telugu, but later cooperated with the searches after the officials produced search warrants.
Searches were carried out even at his offices of Obulapuram Mining Company where Reddy’s father-in-law Parameshwar was asked to accompany officials for clarifications on documents.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Alok Kumar told reporters, “We are not only tracing the gold bullion and where it went, but are also trying to know who all invested with Ambidant and what documents we can get from them to make our case watertight.”
“We had information that Reddy got to know that the police will knock on his doors when Rajmahal Fancy jewellers’ owner based in Ballari was picked up for questioning around 10 days ago,” Kumar added. The jeweller was picked up after the CCB stumbled on a transaction of Rs 18 crore for which the jeweller claimed 57 kg of gold bullion was purchased.