SVU professor held for Vemana Varsity fraud

SVU professor held for Vemana Varsity fraud

Professor Y Venkata Rama Reddy of the department of geology of Sri Venkateswara University, also a former registrar, was arrested on Thursday along with two others for misappropriating funds meant for  construction work at the Yogi Vemana University at Kadapa.

Reddy also worked as the OSD of Yogi Vemana University. The two other accused arrested are SV University in-charge engineer E Madhusudan and assistant engineer Hidayatullah.

According to the police, cases were filed against the trio under various sections of the IPC at the SV University campus police station.

When the state government decided to upgrade the Kadapa PG Centre, a constituent college of SV University, to a university in 2007, the state government released crores of rupees for taking up construction work and appointed SV University vice-chancellor J.Jayaram Reddy as in-charge vice-chancellor of the new university.

Much of the infrastructure at the new university was created under the supervision of Prof Venkatarama Reddy who was appointed as OSD of YVU and engineering department officials Madhusudan and Hidayatulla. The government had ordrered a CID inquiry following a petition filed in the High Court by a retired faculty member of SV University.

At least two former vice-chancellors and two registrars of SV University and three engineering officials were accused in the case.

‘’The investigation prima face established that in seven temporary works carried out at Kadapa with the apparent reason of creating additional classrooms, there were irregularities and misappropriation,’’ CID officials said. There was no need to create those works as less expensive alternatives were available and the departmental procedure adopted was also irregular, they said.

‘’Thus the accused were found guilty of culpable  administrative, financial and technical lapses and committed wrongful loss to public funds and misappropriated,’’ they said.

The investigation is at a preliminary stage, further evidence has to be collected to establish the complicity of some more accused.

CID DSP Nagaraju and his team arrested the trio and took them to Chittoor to produce them in the CID court there.

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