Chitra Ramkrishna sold a house in one of Chennai's toniest locations, Seethammal Colony Extension, to Anand Subramanian's wife Sunitha Anand for Rs 3.2 crore on February 23, 2021, it has emerged. Anand happens to be the man at the centre of ex-CEO and MD of NSE Chitra's Himalayan Baba revelations.
The 2081-square-feet flat is in a white, five-storeyed building named Vishranti (Rest). At least one Jaguar and two BMW cars were seen parked in the complex that has only four families in residence. One of Tamil filmdom's most famous comedians lives at this address.
Arrested by the CBI and flown to Delhi for further questioning, Anand, who is six months shy of his 51st birthday, had been living here since 2012 with his wife and family, according to a well-connected source.
The revelation that Anand was staying in a flat originally registered in Chitra's name on July 14, 2010 and sold to his wife 11 years later adds a new chapter to an already filmy story that has gripped the nation. It is proof that Chitra and Anand's links stretch well before his NSE days (April 2013-October 2016) and have carried on well beyond.
The Anands largely kept to themselves in the locality, The New Indian Express learnt.
They would go for daily walks and Anand was an active member of the Colony association.
The source said Anand while being "stingy" was otherwise "nice". Always sporting vibhuti on his forehead, he kept a keen eye on the Colony association accounts and had made suggestions in certain matters involving the law.
The family seems to have been devout. The priest always collected the keys to the 'temple', situated in the alcove of the outer walls that fenced their building, from them, a person working there said. But beyond this, the people residing in the locality knew little else of them.
"No one has gone into their house. Everything about him was secretive. He did not open up to anyone," a resident who happened to meet Anand regularly said.
Crucially, no one had any inkling of their roles at the NSE before the arrest.
Sunitha, it must be remembered, held a prime post at NSE, Chennai once upon a time, and Anand, of course, was the man who rose to become the Group Operating Officer of the NSE from nowhere. He was drawing a princely salary of Rs 4.21 crore a year when he and Chitra Ramkrishna were booted out.
Only when the news of Anand's arrest became public did people in the Colony realise that he had been an NSE hotshot and figured prominently in the mails that Chitra exchanged with the Himalayan Baba. Also that he was the man whom the EY (Ernst & Young) investigation into these mails -- codenamed Project Apostle -- pinned down as the Baba, a conclusion based on the cyber footprints the firm had unearthed.
The Peak that was brought down
Interestingly, Anand, while largely keeping to himself in Seethammal Colony Extension, had pulled off an attention-grabbing act in the neighbourhood recently. He had been involved in the purchase of a two and quarter grounds plot, one where a house named 'The Peak' once stood.
In its place, a grand home is now being raised, with four bedrooms, a hall, a dining room, a pooja room almost as big as the hall, a lounge, gym, and car parking area.
The cost of the property alone is estimated to be in the region of Rs 15 crore. Construction work -- excluding the plumbing, wiring, painting and interiors -- has been quoted at Rs 1.1 crore.
Owned earlier by a professor of English who was working in Hong Kong, according to our source, it had subsequently been bought by a doctor working in Seychelles. This doctor had been trying to offload the property for the past four-five years till he finally found a buyer in Anand Subramanian. Or had it been bought by Sunitha's cousin sister as Anand kept insisting to those he knew?
As we stood chatting under a leafy tree, the person who shared this information wondered. "Could this cousin be Chitra? I have heard after Anand's arrest that Sunitha was related to Chitra and they could even be cousins."
Another tale around the duo -- this time without a Baba in the mix -- had sprung up on a late Chennai evening.
With inputs from Gladwin Emmanuel and Sunish P Surendran