VIJAYAWADA: Mantralayam Circle Inspector D Ramu on Monday received the first prize in the Best Crime Detection (ABCD) category from Home Minister N Chinarajappa and Director General of Police (DGP) RP Thakur. He received the prize for solving a nine-year-old fraud case. He even donned the role of a watchman and pretended to be a Christian to nab the accused, who had cheated more than 2,000 people in three states promising loans and jobs.
The case goes back to 2009 when the notorious financial fraudster, Jagathap Mahesh Kumar, a native of Yemmiganur town of Kurnool district, duped as many as 2,000 people from Andhra and Telangana regions, and Karnataka. Through his company called Heavenly Interdenominational Mission (HIM), Mahesh collected around Rs 14.4 crore from the people promising them jobs and loans.
A case was filed against him at Adoni Two Town police station and the accused was arrested and sent to remand on June 21, 2013. While serving his imprisonment in the Kurnool Sub-jail, Mahesh managed to escape with the help of his friends. Later, the police arrested all the accused except Mahesh.Kurnool SP Gopinath Jetti constituted a special team headed by Ramu. The case had reached a dead end when Ramu and his team took over the investigation as the accused proved to be a clever customer. Mahesh spread rumours that he underwent plastic surgery to evade identification and, another story woven by him said he was murdered. But the police did not give up and kept a watch on his relatives.
The investigating team used ‘Third Eye’ technology and searched for persons with surname Jagathap. But ended up zeroing in on a wrong person. “We knew that we were dealing with a tough case. When the investigation began there were no clues about the whereabouts of the accused. He vanished into thin air in 2013 and tried to mislead the police. We, somehow, got hold of his marriage photos and interrogated Mahesh’s brother-in-law Paul Dinakar. From the information given by Paul, we came to know that Mahesh’s wife was sending money to him which led our team to Undavalli,” said CI D Ramu.
The investigation was back to square one with the police failing to get his address. “By narrating a fake story to ICICI bank officials at Undavalli, we collected the bank account details of Mahesh’s wife and found him in a CCTV footage of the bank. This was our first victory in the case. He had changed his name to Joshua and started residing at Rain Tree Park Villa near tollgate,” the CI explained.
They were up against another odd. Finding his flat. “It’s tough to identify his house among 1400 flats in Rain Tree villa. I took up the job of a watchman to know his flat number and also became a Christian to nab him. After spending three sleepless nights, we arrested him,” he recalled.What left them dumbfounded was the fact that the accused was an immediate neighbour of former DGP Malakondaiah and even had managed to build rapport with IPS and IAS officers.The home minister praised the efforts of the investigating team and presented them with `one lakh cash prize.