N Chandrababu Naidu, the leader of the Telugu Desam Party, has been identified as the primary defendant in a chargesheet presented by the Crime Investigation Department of Andhra Pradesh Police, concerning the Rs 114-crore AP Fibernet Scam. This legal document was formally lodged on Friday at the Vijayawada ACB Court.
In addition to Naidu, the CID has also implicated V Hari Krishna Prasad, the managing director of Net India in Hyderabad, and K Sambasiva Rao, an IRTS officer, as co-accused.
The CID elaborated that Naidu, during his tenure as the chief minister, concurrently oversaw the energy, infrastructure, and investment department, and personally advocated for the implementation of the fiber net project. The investigative agency further stated that the procurement process was allegedly tampered with to grant a work order worth Rs 330 crore for Phase – 1 of the AP Fibernet Project to a preferred company.
The purported malfeasance unfolded during the tenure of the former TDP government between 2014 and 2019, with the CID asserting that numerous irregularities transpired from the tender allocation to the culmination of the entire project, leading to substantial financial losses to the public treasury.
According to the CID's chargesheet, Naidu purportedly endorsed the cost estimate of the Fibernet project without conducting a market survey to ascertain the prices of materials or the requisite standards. Moreover, the CID alleged that the former chief minister exerted pressure on senior government officials to include Hari Krishna Prasad in various tender evaluation committees, rescind the blacklisting of Terasoftware Pvt Ltd, and ultimately grant the tender to the same company, among other infractions.
The charge sheet put forth by the CID also spotlighted how the accused parties purportedly funneled the embezzled funds through a network of companies purportedly affiliated with their associates, utilizing counterfeit invoices.
