Bengaluru’s ex-corporator to be grilled in extortion cases

Bengaluru, May 22 (IANS) A local court on Monday extended police custody of former civic corporator V. Nagaraj for three more days for questioning with regards to the three extortion cases filed against him in a money-laundering deal on complaints from three of his many victims, said police on Monday.

"Though we sought four days more of Nagaraj's custody as the 10-day remand ended Monday, Additional Chief Magistrate Jyothishree gave us three days to complete interrogating him in the money-laundering case and on the extortion charges against him," Bengaluru Deputy Commissioner of Police, East, Ajay Hilory told reporters here.

Nagaraj, who had been avading arrest for nearly a month, was eventually nabbed along with his two sons Gandhi and Shastri on May 11 from Arcot in Tamil Nadu's Vellore district and were brought here on May 12. They had fled in wake of the April 14 police raid on his home-office from where Rs 14.8 crore in demonetised notes, to be exchanged for new notes, were seized.

"We have to quiz him on where he has hidden an additional Rs 8 crore in cash he extorted from three businessmen-cum-industrialists who approached him in November for exchanging the banned notes with new notes, which he did not gave them," said Deputy Commissioner of Police, West, M.N. Anucheth on the occasion.

The three victims - Muniraju, Kalyan and Chandrakumar - filed separate complaints on May 21 with the Kengeri police station, alleging that Nagaraj and his sons had threatened them with a pistol, assaulted them and extorted the money after calling them to meet at a designated spot to launder the money.

"Nagaraj and his two sons have extorted Rs 3.8 crore from Kalyan, Rs 2.5 crore from Muniraju and Rs 1.75 crore from Chandrakumar on the pretext of converting the old notes into new notes as they were unaccounted," said Anucheth.

Nagaraj was an independent corporator of the Bengaluru City Corporation from the Prakashnagar civic ward in the city's western suburb from 2002 to 2007.

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