ACB books former minister Vidadala Rajini, others in Rs 2.20 crore extortion racket case

Vijayawada: The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has registered a case against YSRCP leader and former minister Vidadala Rajini, IPS officer Palle Joshua and several others for their alleged involvement in an illegal extortion racket targeting the owner of a stone-crushing firm.

The ACB’s Central Investigation Unit (CIU) has filed an FIR under charges against four people under sections 7 and 7A, as well as 384, 120B of the IPC, and BNSS 173 and 176. Vidadala Rajini has been named Accused No. 1 (A1), Palle Joshua as A2, Rajini’s brother-in-law Gopi as A3 and her personal assistant Dodda Ramakrishna as A4.

What is the case about?

According to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the case centred around the illegal collection of Rs 2.20 crores from the owners of Sri Lakshmi Balaji Stone Crusher in Kandrika village, Yadlapadu mandal, Palnadu district.

On September 4, 2020, the then Chilakaluripet MLA Vidadala Rajini and PA Dodda Ramakrishna visited Sri Lakshmi Balaji Stone Crusher.

Stone crusher’s owners were asked to pay up Rs 5 crore

The owners were allegedly ordered to meet the MLA under the threat of attacks and closure of the stone crusher. Later, the owners, Nallapaneni Chalapathi Rao and Namburi Srinivasa Rao, met Rajini at her office where she told them that if they wanted to run a business in her constituency, they would have to pay up. PA Ramakrishna named the price as Rs 5 crore.

Six days later, on September 10, IPS officer Palle Joshua, who was the then Guntur Regional Vigilance and Enforcement Officer (RVEO), even without a complaint, rushed to Sri Lakshmi Balaji Stone Crusher with a large team to conduct inspections. The RVEO also didn’t get permission from the then Vigilance DG.

The vigilance department was not informed of the raid

The vigilance headquarters was not given any information about the raids. The report about the investigation did not mention the amount of damage to the government treasury. When the ACB questioned the other officers who participated in these searches at that time, they all testified that they participated in the checks only on Joshua’s orders and that they did not even know what happened in the investigation.

A month after inspecting the stone crusher, Joshua called the owners and threatened to close the crusher, demanding that they meet Rajini immediately. They met Rajini again and the demand for Rs 5 crore was raised again. After some time, Joshua once again called the crusher owners to his office and warned them to settle quickly.

As pressure from Joshua mounted, the stone crusher owners, on Rajini’s orders, met Gopi, her wife, at his residence in Purushothapatnam on April 4, 2021, and gave her Rs 2 crore. On the same day, Rs. 10 lakhs were paid to Joshua in Guntur and another Rs 10 lakh to Gopi. Joshua said that they had carried out the inspections on the orders of Vidadala Rajini.

The stone crush owners, in the FIR, said that they were threatened with criminal cases and closure of the business if they told anyone that they had paid the amount to Rajini. An initial complaint by the Vigilance and Enforcement Department led to an investigation by Director General Harish Kumar Gupta. After his report, the government ordered an ACB inquiry. The report was not submitted to the DG.