The ACB officials on Tuesday detained retired Engineer-in-Chief of Irrigation Muralidhar Rao in a disproportionate assets case in the wake of allegations of large-scale irregularities in the construction of the Kaleshwaram project.They conducted searches at Muralidhar Rao’s residence in Banjara Hills since early Tuesday morning, found assets worth over Rs 500 crore and arrested by ACB officials after the searches.
Former Executive Engineer-in-Chief (ENC) Hari Ram and EE Noone Sridhar have already been arrested in this order. Extensive searches were conducted at Muralidhar Rao’s houses, offices and relatives’ residences. He played a key role in the construction of the Kaleshwaram project. Simultaneous searches were conducted at a total of 10 places in Hyderabad city as well as Karimnagar and Zahirabad areas.
It is reported that the ACB has found a huge amount of illegal assets in these searches. It seems that the ACB has found in its preliminary investigation that there were large-scale irregularities in the allocation of sub-contracts in the Kaleshwaram project.
Muralidhar Rao retired in the united Andhra Pradesh state, but his tenure was later extended by the previous BRS government. He remained in office for some time even after the Congress government came to power in the state. The government removed Muralidhar Rao after the vigilance report on the Medigadda collapse incident.
Officials revealed that the ACB also found illegal assets worth hundreds of crores in the searches conducted at the houses of former ENC Hari Ram and EE Noonee Sridhar, who were arrested earlier. It is suspected that all these irregularities came from irregularities in the allocation of sub-contracts and funds related to the Kaleshwaram project.
The commission appointed by the state government has already taken up the investigation into the corruption in the Kaleshwaram project. Former ENC Muralidhar Rao was also questioned in this commission’s investigation. However, it seems that he gave answers like ‘I don’t know.. I forgot the questions asked by the commission. Since the name of former ENC Muralidhar Rao was also included in the vigilance report, the ACB focused on him.