The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday raided offices and residences of TRS Lok Sabha members from Khammam, Nama Nageshwar Rao in connection with Rs 1,064 crore bank fraud case.

Raids were conducted simultaneously at six locations on residences and offices of Nama in Hyderabad and Khammam.

It may be recalled that the CBI had booked case in 2019 and filed charge sheet in 2020 Ranchi Expressway Ltd and its directors.

Nama Prithvi Teja is the director of Ranchi Expressway. The firms belonging to Nama Nageshwar Rao obtained Rs 1,064 loans from banks but diverted the money for other purposes. The loans were obtained to lay four-lane road of 163-km stretch between Ranchi and Jamshedpur.

The NHAI awarded the contract to Ranchi Expressway Ltd owned by Nama’s Madhucon Project Ltd but Nama’s firms failed to take up works and even defaulted on repayment of loans. With this, banks declared loans as NPA and filed cases against Nama’s firms.

Nama Nageshwar Rao is the personal guarantor for the loans.

The ED raids on Nama, who is the TRS floor leader in Lok Sabha, shocked TRS leadership.

The TRS leadership fears that these raids indicate that Modi’s government at the Centre will order more such raids by ED and CBI on key businessmen, industrialists who are close to TRS.

The BJP is going aggressive in Telangana to dethrone TRS and TRS leaders fear that BJP is adopting the policy of using ED and CBI as weapons to target Opposition parties as was done in West Bengal, Karnataka etc.

Telangana BJP leaders are already threatening that ED and CBI will raid KCR and his family members properties too anytime and they will be sent to jail for amassing wealth by misusing power over the past seven years.