AP CID names Nara Lokesh as accused in Inner Ring Road scam

Amaravati: The Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department (AP CID) filed a memo naming Telugu Desam Party (TDP) national general secretary Nara Lokesh, son of former chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, as A14 (Accused No 14) in the Amaravati capital city Inner Ring Road scam.

A few days ago, the AP CID also filed a PT warrant in the ACB court seeking custody of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu (A1) in the same case. Naidu is currently in Central Prison in Rajahmundry, arrested in the AP Skill Development Corporation Scam.

Nara Lokesh and family had controlling power in Heritage Foods

According to the AP CID report, the others accused in the case include former minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development Ponguru Narayana; Lingamaneni Ramesh and Lingamaneni Venkata Surya Rajasekhar of Lingamaneni group of companies; KPV Anjani Kumar of RK Housing Ltd, Nara Lokesh of Heritage Foods Pvt Ltd., and many more.

Nara Lokesh is one of the major individual shareholders of Heritage Foods Ltd. and he was one of the key management personnel till 2017. He had 23,66,400 shares i.e. 10.20 per cent of shares in the company and was the director of the company from July 1, 2008 to June 29, 2013. He was also the non-executive director of Heritage Foods, from June 26, 2013, to March 31, 2017.

Apart from Nara Lokesh, his family members and their companies also held equity of more than 56 per cent in Heritage Foods. This means that they had a controlling power over the company, which includes the power to appoint the board, which could get unanimous approvals for the transactions.

Heritage’s largest land purchase across AP

According to the AP CID report, between June and September of 2014, Heritage purchased about acres 10.4 cents in Kantheru Village in Guntur district. This was their largest purchase of land, between 2014 and 2019 across Andhra Pradesh.

Heritage also purchased another acres 4.55 cents from the companies belonging to Lingamaneni Ramesh and Lingamaneni Rajashekar. However, the AP CID stated that the conspiracy is visible from the fact that the sale deeds were later cancelled.

Inner Ring Road plan was moved to be near land owned by Heritage

The land banks of Lingamanenis (about 340 acres) and that of Heritage were adjacent to one another.

According to the report by the CID, Chandrababu Naidu and Ponguru Narayana, who were at the helm of affairs in selection of the agencies for designs and drawings of the Master Plan of the Amaravathi Capital City, alignment for the Inner Ring Road (IRR) and the Seed Capital, intentionally and in a calculated manner, conspired to provide undue enrichment to the Narayana Group Institutions, Lingamaneni group of companies, Rama Krishna Housing Pvt. Ltd., Heritage Foods, etc., and at the cost of the public exchequer, and in abuse of their official position entrusted the work of making designs of IRR, Capital city area and Seed Capital to the companies which worked as per their directives.

The report said that the initial design was changed, wherein the proposed Inner Ring Road was shifted from the border of the capital city to 2-3 km southwards towards Kaza and Kantheru villages, to pass just adjacent to the lands of the Lingamanenis and Heritage Foods. Care was taken to ensure that their land was minimally acquired and the Inner Ring Road, with a 75 m right of way, came to lie just adjacent to these lands.

“The agency selected as the Master Planner was guided by the Planning Division of APCRDA on how the draft Master Plan should be. As the chairman and vice-chairman of APCRDA, Naidu and P Narayana used the arrangement to design the Inner Ring Road in such a manner that it passed just adjacent to the properties of the accused,” said the CID report.

Narayana helped move land closer to Narayana College campuses

According to CID, P Narayana instructed to change the alignment from the already existing 100 feet road between Tadigadapa and Enikepadu to an area between Penamaluru and Done Atkuru villages. By this, he was able to avoid any acquisition of land from the Narayana College campus beside the 100 feet road near Tadigadapa and brought the 75 m wide Inner Ring Road closer to Narayana College campuses which were operated by his family members, between Penamaluru and Done Atkuru.

Entities linked to P Narayana and his relatives, such as Narayana Education Society, Narayana Learning Pvt. Ltd., and Rama Narayana Education Trust invested money in Rama Krishna Housing Limited Project near Kaza in Guntur district and the alignment of the Inner Ring Road was brought as close to it as possible.

Quid-pro-quo between Naidu, Lokesh and Lingamaneni group

“It was an admitted fact that Naidu stayed in a house belonging to the Lingamanenis, near Undavalli, without paying any rent and Heritage Foods Ltd. had purchased land just adjacent to the lands of the Lingamanenis before the Capital City was notified. This is a crystal-clear quid-pro-quo arrangement in the designing of the Inner Ring Road, between the Lingamanenis, Naidu and Heritage Foods, owned by his family members,” the CID report said.

Nara Lokesh too stayed in the same house during his stint as an MLC and as the minister in the then TDP government.

When the board of directors of Heritage Foods passed a resolution to buy the lands from the Lingamanenis and others, Nara Lokesh was one of the board members as a non-executive director. He was coordinating this purchase, in conspiracy with his father, the AP CID report said.

The ACB court had issued ad-interim attachment orders under the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 1944, against the Karakatta house received as quid-pro-quo by Naidu and his family members from the Lingamanenis.

Farmers lost from manipulation of IRR alignment

The CID, in their statement, said that while Naidu, P Narayana, the Lingamanenis and Heritage Foods stood to gain by manipulating the IRR alignment, many farmers whose land got notified under the manipulated alignment of the IRR suffered a wrongful loss, owing to the depreciation in the value of the land, not getting permissions to take up any constructions and banks not willing to provide loans.

Selection of seed Capital area to suit the interests of Narayana

When the Master Planner gave three options on the location of the Seed Capital area of 1,691 acres, Naidu and P Narayana finalised the location in such a manner that the seed capital was designed just adjacent to the about 58 acres of land acquired in the name of the family members and relatives of Narayana as benamis, utilising the funds provided by P Narayana.

The Special Court for SPE and ACB, Vijayawada concurred with the version of the prosecution that there was an abuse of official position and decision-making capacity for personal gains, by Naidu and Ponguru Narayana and that the house in which Naidu now resides in the Capital City area was an illegal and quid-pro-quo gratification received from another accused in the case Lingamaneni Ramesh.