ACB unearths Rs 65 crore assets of Nellore Special Deputy Collector in DA case

Visakhapatnam: Anti-Corruption-Bureau (ACB) officials on Thursday arrested Mannam Lakshmi Narasimham, Special Deputy Collector in-charge of land acquisition in Telugu Ganga project in Nellore district. He had amassed illegal assets worth Rs 4.14 crore as per document value but over Rs 65 crore as per market value.

ACB sleuths raided Narasimham and his relatives’ houses in Nellore, Kavali, Prakasam and Rajahmundry. The seized illegal assets include cash, gold, land holdings, homes and a few others. An officer with ACB said that they had found documents indicating that Narasimham employed a contractor to construct a shopping complex valued at Rs 2.98 crore.

“We also seized some movable assets, including promissory notes worth Rs 18 lakh, Rs 4.5 lakh in cash, 650 grammes of gold ornaments, two vehicles worth Rs 6.04 lakh and a bank balance of Rs 2 lakh,” the officer added.

The officials also found that Narasimham purchased a plot in Thullur village under Guntur district near the capital city of Andhra Pradesh. Though the plot cost is Rs 8.55 lakh as per document value, it could be around one crore, they added.

Among the seized properties, most of the assets were in Narasimham’s wife Namburi Venkata Vijaya Lakshmi and his elder son Mannam Bharghav’s name.

Narasimham joined as a Village Development Officer in Panchayat Raj department in Prakasam district in 1989. He rose to Special Deputy Collector in 2011. When he was working as Mandal Revenue Officer, Narasimham was involved in massive corruption and amassed a lot of illegal assets.

The ACB officials said that they have to verify some more documents to spell out the exact illegal properties amassed by Narasimham.