The Madras High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to sand mining baron Sekhar Reddy and two of his associates, reported NDTV. Reddy has been asked to report at the Enforcement Directorate office in Delhi every day at 10.30 am until further orders. The accused have also been asked to furnish sureties.
Reddy had been granted bail earlier in March, but was arrested by the ED on charges of money laundering a few days after his release. He had first been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in December after Income Tax Department officials had found crores of unaccounted for wealth at his office. Currency notes worth Rs 106 crore (pictured above), including more than Rs 10 crore in the new bills, and 127 kg gold, were found during I-T raids at eight locations in Chennai.
Reddy had also been expelled from the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthana after the I-T Department raided his premises on December 8 and 9. Reddy had reportedly visited Apollo Hospital to offer the temple’s prasad to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on October 12, when she was undergoing treatment before her death on December 5.
Reddy has connections with many bigwigs and was involved in sand quarrying across the state in the last few years, according to The Indian Express. Scroll.in had reported earlier that Reddy had replaced O Arumugasamy as the biggest sand miner in the state, after the latter fell out of Jayalalithaa’s good books.
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