Hyderabad: The SIT investigating the alleged attempt to poach TRS MLAs in Telangana has claimed to have seized two passports of different names from Ramachandra Bharati, one of the accused arrested in the case along with Simhayaji, and Nandakumar. The SIT is probing whether Bharati has obtained the second passport through forgery.
As per the investigators, based on the forensic examination of a laptop and two cell phones seized from Ramachandra Bharati, he was found to be in possession of two different passports. One passport is in the name of Swamiji Sri Ramachandra, son of Mahaswami Shri Madhwa Dharmadatji with date of birth as 12th February 1979 and residence entered as Puttur, Karnataka.
The passport has been issued on 8 November 2019, as per investigators. However, another passport recovered from Bharati's possession and issued on 11 July 2010 is in the name of Bharatkumar Sharma, son of Srikrishnamurthy Velakunja. It has the address of Kodagu in Karnataka. The date of birth in the second passport is 12 February 1988.
Interestingly, the mother's name in both the passports is Saraswati Velakunja. The SIT is probing the forgery angle in the case. Sources said that the SIT will write to the passport authorities over the matter. It is learnt that the SIT has found extensive Whatasapp chats with an unknown number on one of the two cellphones seized from Bharati.
Besides, there are messages sent from those phones to one Sunil Kumar Bansal, BL Santhosh, and Tushar Vellapalli. Extensive chats with accused Nandakumar were also found on Bharati's phone, sources said. There are talks between the two regarding luring the four TRS MLAs, added the sources. It is learnt that the SIT has prepared a dossier running on one lakh pages in the case of baiting MLAs.
As the accused and the suspects belong to different areas, the police collected data from those areas, the SIT team fetched information from around 40 servers in those areas. The poaching case was filed on October 26 based on a complaint from TRS Tandur MLA Pilot Rohith Reddy. On November 10, the State government formed a seven-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.
Also read: TRS MLAs 'poaching' case: BJP leader Santhosh, 3 more named as accused
The SIT headed by Hyderabad City Police Commissioner CV Anand has Nalgonda SP Rema Rajeshwari, Cyberabad DCP (Crime) Kalmeshwar Shingenawar and Shamshabad DCP R Jagadishwar Reddy as its members among others. Significantly, the SIT on Thursday named senior BJP leader B L Santhosh and three others as accused in the case. Following directions from the Telangana High Court, the SIT, probing the case, also issued a second notice to BJP National General Secretary (Organisation) Santhosh, who is yet to appear before it.
