Two held for duping former Union minister T Subbarami Reddy’s wife of 32.5L shares

HYDERABAD: A team of central crime station (CCS) personnel has arrested two directors of a Mumbai-based finance company for disposing off 32.50 lakh shares belonging to a firm owned by the wife of former Union minister T Subbarami Reddy.
Police said based on a complaint by T Indira Reddy, chairperson of Gayatri Projects Limited (GPL), Chetan Balubai Patel and Harshawardhan Avinash Pradhan, both directors of Mumbai-based Champion Finsec Limited (CFL), were picked up by Hyderabad police for cheating GPL.
The accused had sold the GPL shares in the open market on the pretext of providing loan to GPL.
CCS officials said that in June this year, CFL approached Indira Reddy’s GPL, an infrastructure and highway development company, offering them a loan on a commission of 1 per cent.
Trusting CFL authorities, GPL decided to take a loan of Rs 11.50 crore by pledging 69.63 lakh shares, but eventually settled for 32.50 lakh shares.
They signed a master loan agreement and its proportional amount of loan as per GPL’s prevailing share value.
But with CFL failing to transfer the loan amount, GPL management got suspicious about the Mumbai firm.
“As per the terms of the agreement, the loan amount in proportion to the shares pledged was to be transferred to GPL account on or before July 12, 2021. But CFL has not even transferred any loan amount to GPL account and further it was found that on July 8, 2021, CFL illegally invoked the pledged shares and sold them in open market,” joint commissioner of police (CCS) Avinash Mohanty said.
The accused allegedly sold these shares between July 8 and July 13.
These shares were earlier pledged by transferring them into the demat account of CFL.
Patel and Pradhan were arrested under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of IPC.