The Hyderabad police on Wednesday took former Andhra Pradesh Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya and her relatives into custody after an alleged kidnapping of a former hockey player and his relatives. The people kidnapped have been identified as Praveen Rao, Sunil Rao and Naveen Rao, said to be related to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
The police said that in connection with the case, two people, former TDP Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya and her husband Bhargav, have been taken into custody along with some others. The former Allagadda legislator was reportedly picked up from her Kukatpally home in Hyderabad and is being questioned by the police. According to the police, the incident may have been over a land dispute.
According to the complainant, the henchmen who carried out ‘kidnap’ were known to the former minister. The hockey player and his relatives were dropped off by the kidnappers at 3 am at Kokapet in Hyderabad's Outer Ring Road, the complainant, advocate Pratap Kumar and the victims’ elder brother told TNM. After the incident, Mahabubabad MP Maloth Kavitha and Minister Srinivas Goud visited the family.
In a press release, the Hyderabad police said that around ten to 15 people barged into the house of the victims at around 7 pm after illegally trespassing their premises and introduced themselves as officials of the Income Tax (I-T) department to conduct a raid. The police said that they showed forged ID cards and instructed the family members to sit in the hall and produced a ‘search warrant’.
The police said that the accused left three people in the hall and took the others into the bedroom. Two accused stood at the door to watch over the victims. At 8.40 pm, the police said that a relative visited the house and asked why the door was locked from outside, which is when the kidnapping came to light.
A case has been registered by the Bowenpally police under Indian Penal Code Sections 448 (Punishment for house-trespass), 419 (Punishment for cheating by personation), 341 (Punishment for wrongful restraint), 342 (Punishment for wrongful confinement), 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation), 366 (Kidnapping, abducting) read with Section 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).
“The kidnapping case was reported and all persons are with the family now. We will conduct a press meet today,” a police official said on Wednesday morning.