Ending months of speculation, former CBI Joint Director VV Lakshminarayana met with actor-politician Pawan Kalyan and joined the Jana Sena Party in Andhra Pradesh. The duo met on Saturday to negotiate a deal and Pawan officially welcomed him into the party’s fold on Sunday.

Lakshminarayana, who took voluntary retirement from the Indian Police Service (IPS) in April 2018, has probed a number of high-profile cases, most prominently the disproportionate assets case against YSRCP chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, among others.

A source close to Lakshminarayana told TNM that Pawan had called the ex-IPS officer on Saturday afternoon even as the latter was considering his political options. Last month, the TDP had extended Lakshminarayana an invite and media reports had suggested that the deal was almost finalised.

“While the TDP had made the offer, he (Lakshminarayana) had not yet made the decision. However, many media outlets, especially those close to the ruling party, began spreading the news that he had accepted it. This did not go down well with him,” the source said, adding that it was too early to comment about which seat he could be contesting from.

Since his voluntary retirement, Lakshminarayana has reached out to several young voters in both the Telugu states and had expressed his desire to work on issues related to the agrarian crisis in rural areas. He had created a flutter in May 2018 when he attended an RSS convention in the outskirts of Hyderabad. His picture with RSS leaders in Telangana had given rise to speculation that he would join the BJP, something which was dismissed quickly by his aides. In November 2018, the former IPS officer and his aides even mulled launching their own political party, with media reports suggesting that the name ‘Jana Dhwani’ or People’s Voice had been settled on.

Besides Jagan’s DA case, Lakshminarayana has also handled the Obulapuram mining case, in which the Ballari Reddy brothers were accused of indulging in illegal mining besides the investigation into the financial fraud by Byrraju Ramalingaraju of Satyam Computers.