Krishna Yadav aided Telgi till 2001: Police

HYDERABAD: It was not just Mohammed Abdul Waheed Quadri who sold fake stamps through his outlet at Babu Khan Estate in Basheerbagh even after the Begum Bazar police registered a case against the racketeers in 1999. All the outlets run by the stamp scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi in the state continued to carry out their operations right untill 2001.
This was because Telgi’s racket in Hyderabad was protected by C Krishna Yadav, then a minister in the Telugu Desam Party government, sources in the Special Investigation Team of the Maharashtra police told The Times of India.
Krishna Yadav ensured that no police action was taken against the Telgi’s crime syndicate due to which the case was kept under wraps though it was transferred to the Crime Investigation Department (CID). Despite knowing this political protection, the Stamps Investigation Team of the Hyderabad police failed to name Krishna Yadav as an accused in the fresh case it has registered on the scam.
Fake stamps worth several crores of rupees were reportedly sold by Telgi’s men in the state with Krishna Yadav protecting the racket. Long after he lost his ministry, Yadav was arrested last year and the police inaction on the scam spilled out, including the fact that Telgi himself was listed as accused no. 29 in the FIR filed at the Begum Bazaar police station in 1998.No action was taken to revived the case even after Telgi was arrested by the Karnataka police and details of his wide-ranging racket were splashed by the media. sources said.
While Krishna Yadav is now cooling his heels in the Yerawada jail in Pune, waiting for bail from the Maharashtra courts, a Telgi associate, Waheed Quadri, who was arrested by the AP police, and a suspended inspector Vijender Reddy have named two IPS officers — Gautam Sawang, then DCP (West Zone) and S R Sukumara, then city police commissioner and now director-general of police, alleging that they were aware of ‘all the developments in the case.’
While Quadri’s confessional statement contained the names of 11 police officers who allowed the fake stamp racket to flourish unhindered, the names of Sukumara and Sawang have been mentioned by subordinate officers as figures in the know of the proceedings in the case.With the involvement of two senior officers being talked about, SIT officers are confused about proceeding with their investigation, sources said.
The case has now put the entire Andhra Pradesh police department in an embarrassing situation despite reported attempts to tamper with the evidence and to leave out of some material evidence which could have established the role of the culprits who protected the racket, sources said.