THE JHARKHAND STORY DESK
New Delhi, Feb 17: In a chargesheet filed by the Andhra Pradesh Police’s Crime Investigation Department, Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu has been identified as the main accused in relation to the Rs 114-crore AP Fibernet Scam case. The chargesheet was filed in the Vijayawada ACB Court on Friday.
In addition to Naidu, the two accused individuals mentioned by the CID were K Sambasiva Rao, an IRTS officer, and V Hari Krishna Prasad, managing director of Net India, Hyderabad.
In a statement the CID said that “Naidu, the then chief minister, was holding the portfolio of the energy, infrastructure and investment department. He personally recommended getting the fiber net project executed.”
Allegations by CID
It stated that a favoured company was given a work order for Rs 330 crore for Phase I of the AP Fibernet Project through manipulation of the tender procedure.
The matter pertaining to purported tender rigging transpired between 2014 and 2019, during the previous TDP government.
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The CID highlighted multiple purported irregularities throughout the project’s lifecycle, including the tender allocation and project completion, which ultimately led to substantial losses for the exchequer.
According to the CID chargesheet, Naidu authorized the Fibernet project’s estimate without taking into account the fact that no market research was conducted to determine the item pricing or the standards that would need to be adhered to.
The CID also reported that, among other irregularities, the former Chief Minister had allegedly put pressure on high ranking government officials to include Hari Krishna Prasad in multiple tender evaluation committees, remove Terasoftware Pvt Ltd from the blacklist, and ultimately award the tender to the same company.
According to the CID’s chargesheet, the accused individuals utilized fictitious invoices to allegedly channel the embezzled funds through a network of companies that belonged to their acquaintances.
