'Crorepati' office attender caught with disproportionate

He earns a salary of few thousand rupees a month, but K Narasimha Reddy sits over a pile of cash, 50 acres of agricultural land, 18 residential plots and much more.

Raids by the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Andhra Pradesh Police over the past two days on properties of Reddy, an attender in the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) Office, in Nellore district, have resulted in unearthing of assets worth an estimated Rs 80 crore.

Searches are still continuing to find if the attender K Narasimha Reddy has stashed more illegal wealth, a senior ACB official said.

A simultaneous probe is also being conducted to establish if he possibly acted as a 'benami' of some higher officials of the transport department, the official said.

The ACB's Central Investigation Unit conducted the raids on Reddy's properties in Nellore and arrested him after huge illegal assets were discovered in his and his kin's name.

Reddy joined the regional transport office as an attender in 1984 and continued in the post at the same place all through by rejecting periodic promotions.

Over 50 acres of agricultural land, 18 house sites, a residential building, Rs 1.01 crore in LIC deposits, Rs 20 lakh in bank deposits, two kg gold and seven kg silver articles were unearthed during the searches, the ACB said.

The ACB said about Rs 7.7 lakh and two two-wheelers were also seized.

"When we opened two bank lockers in his wife and daughter"s names, we found another 3.8 kg gold and 7.10 kg silver. All this could be worth over Rs 2 crore. He registered most properties in his wife, daughter and kin's names," an ACB official said.

"This is the first time we seized such huge assets from an attender-level employee. We are investigating the case from various angles," ACB DSP Rama Devi said.