Well-known for his shotgun utterances, former minister P Shankar Rao, who has been on the radar of the police since some time for his alleged role in the Greenfields land scam, was picked up for questioning by the police on Thursday. Not long thereafter, he complained of chest pain and was admitted to the Gandhi Hospital for a check-up.
The cops let him off there and his family members shifted him to Care.
Shankar Rao had failed to appear before the investigators despite repeated notices. A 10-man posse led by Alwal ACP G Ganesh Reddy went to his Musheerabad residence at around 4.30 pm Thursday. Even as he resisted, demanding to be shown the arrest warrant, he was physically caught and bundled into a police vehicle and driven away to the Neredmet police station. There the cops questioned Rao on the land deal. A while later, he complained of chest pain and his daughter Sushmita was seen comforting her father, fetching him a glass of water. Shankar Rao had undergone a bypass surgery recently.
Sources said that over the last few months, several notices had been served on Rao under Section 160 of the CrPc to present himself for questioning but he ignored them all. “He was not cooperating, so we had to forcibly pick him up today,’’ one member of the posse said. Sources said the police intended to arrest Shankar Rao, and had even confirmed his health condition by studying his hospital records. Yet, his sudden complaint of chest pain put them in a piquant situation.
Meanwhile, Shankar Rao’s daughter alleged that her father was being targetted as he filed petitions against chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy in connection with a red sanders scam.
GREENFIELDS CASE: RAO ACCUSED OF LANDGRAB
Former minister Shankar Rao was picked up for questioning by the police on Thursday in relation to the Greenfields land scam in which the tenth metropolitan magistrate of Malkajgiri had directed the Neredmet police to register a criminal case against him on Nov. 10, 2011.
The directive was in response to a petition filed in Oct. 2011 by one S Chandrasekhar of the Greenfields Plot Owners Association, alleging that Shankar Rao, then a minister, misused his position to grab 72 acres of land (in survey nos. 373, 375, 376, 378, 379 and 386) in Kanajiguda village in Malkajgiri mandal on the basis of allegedly forged documents purporting to show that the land belonged to his father Yedla Achaiah. Shankar Rao and his brother Dayanand were said to be claiming ownership of 875 plots in the housing layout on the basis of these documents.
Following the complaint, cases were registered against Shankar Rao under Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 197 (knowingly issuing a false certificate), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
A few months ago, the High Court lifted its stay of an arrest warrant against the former minister, following which the police went to his house and conducted a search at Shankar Rao’s residence in Musheerabad.
The former minister was not present at his house at that time but surfaced at the office of the director-general of police office and challenged the police to arrest him. While talking to mediamen there, he collapsed and was shifted to a corporate hospital where he underwent a bypass surgery.
CONTROVERSIES AND SHANKER RAO
Controversies and Shanker Rao go hand in hand. Once he slapped his aide in full public view. On another occasion, he addressed a press conference seated on the floor of his office in Secretariat becausethe government had not bought new furniture for him.
After he was discharged from hospital on Nov. 20, 2012, his personal assistant approached the Musheerabad police and lodged a complaint against the ACP of Alwal, G Ganesh Reddy alleging that the latter stole valuable documents from the former minister’s house.
Once earlier, Shanker Rao lodged a complaint with the Musheerabad police alleging that an advocate who had come to pay a visit to him had stolen his blank letterheads.