High Court to Telangana, AP: Explain steps taken in Akshaya Gold fraud

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Monday directed both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states to explain the steps taken with regard to the FIRs registered on the fraud committed by Akshaya Gold Farms and Villas India Ltd and its group companies by Friday .
The bench of acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice P Naveen Rao gave this direction while hearing a plea by Akshaya Gold Customers and Agents Welfare Association, Guntur district, which charged the state and its police with gross negligence and inaction in moving against the conmen and their assets.
Petitioner's counsel I V Radhakrishna Murthy told the bench that this scam was not only similar to the AgriGold scam, it was in fact committed by some of the former employees of the AgriGold. Munakapati Sudhakar Rao, Harinath Babu and M Srinivasa Rao, had earlier worked with the marketing wing of AgriGold. They later came out of that firm and floated Akshaya Gold company and started collecting deposits from the poor people in AP, Telangana, Odisha, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana states from 2007 onwards, he said.
They offered high interests and also house sites to lure poor people into investing in their fraudulent schemes, he said. They collected more than Rs 1,000 crore from depositors and defrauded them, he said and urged the court to form an auction committee to sell away the seized assets of the promoters of this company and repay the money to the depositors.
The court's initiative taken in respect of AgriGold scam may be extended to this scam as well, Radhakrishna Murthy said. Though the AP government had attached some assets in the case, it is not auctioning them to repay to depositors, he said. Another counsel N S Arjun has filed a similar case pertaining to the depositors of Akshaya Gold from Kurnool district. The bench heard both the cases.
Answering to a query by the bench, AP's special government pleader D Ramesh said that they have information that the Akshaya Gold company had collected deposits and duped the pub lic to an extent of Rs 600 crore. “We have attached some properties of the company ,“ he said. When the bench wanted to know whether AP and Telangana have made any arrests in the case, Telangana government's special counsel Sarat Kumar said that AP authorities were not sharing any information with them. Urging both the governments to come together at least for the sake of the poor investors of both the states, the bench said it would pass appropriate orders on Friday after seeing the affidavits of both the states. It also directed the registry to club this case along with the AgriGold case and list it on Friday. It directed the police to inform the status of their investigation into the case by that time.