Yadav’s hand in scam was kept under wraps

HYDERABAD: The Crime InvestigationDepartment (CID) of the state police appears to have deliberately kept underwraps its investigation into the multi-crore stamp paper racket, because theagency is said to have been aware of the involvement of TDP legislator C KrishnaYadav in the scam.Though the CID has been probing the case involvinga scam of thousands of crores, only an officer of the rank of inspector, withoutany basic facilities — he does not have a telephone, his office room leakswhen it rains and doesn’t have a vehicle — was posted to conduct theprobe.It is also learnt that the state government was aware of theinvolvement of the former minister for quite sometime, but for some strangereason, the same was kept under wraps.Krishna Yadav is learnt tohave first got involved in the fake stamps racket by providing“protection� to a stamp vendor who ran a shop under the name ofVenkateswara Agencies in the city. In due course of time, Yadav directly gotinvolved in the racket, it is learnt.It may be recalled that theinvestigators in Maharashtra had stumbled upon a foreign printing machine in2002 when the Mumbai police arrested a gang in connection with a foreign stampscam.Sources told The Times of India that about 1,000 second-handprinting machines — that can print four colours at one strike — wereimported from Australia in 1998. The consignment came in the name of aHyderabadi and ever since, there has been no trace of thesemachines.However, the Maharashtra police failed to track themachines, while the AP CID officials said they did not get any information aboutthe foreign printing machines from the Maharashtra police.WithYadav’s arrest and doubts about the involvement of a Hyderabad-basedhawala dealer in the scam, the investigators are learnt to be probing thepossible link between them and the printing machines.