Over 24 hours since death of Telugu businessman Jayaram, cops yet to make headway

Over 24 hours after the death of businessman Jayaram Chirugupati under suspicious circumstances near the Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway in Nandigama in Andhra Pradesh, police have made no headway in the case.

Speaking to TNM, Nandigama CI PV Ramana said, "We are going through the call records of the deceased, but there is no progress yet." He also said that they are yet to identify the person who was seen driving the car at Panthangi toll plaza. "The suspect’s full face was not captured, we could only notice that he was wearing a white shirt."

Police found the dead body of Jayaram in his car on Thursday night. He was the Managing Director of Express TV--a Telugu news channel, which later closed down due to financial crisis.

According to police, they received a call at around 11.30 pm from a patrolling vehicle saying that a car had swerved off the highway and there was a dead body in it.

While checking the car and belongings inside, police were able to identify the deceased as Jayaram.

Police said that Jayaram had left his house on Tuesday without informing his family members, and chose to drive the car himself despite having a driver.  

As per the police, Jayaram had called one of his employees in Vijayawada on Thursday asking him to arrange for lodging.

"We suspect foul play. This is a suspicious death. We suspect that someone killed him and abandoned the car here to make it look like an accident," the CI had said earlier.

In January 2017, Jayaram was arrested by the Balanagar police, on charges of not paying former employees their salary/compensation, as the few cheques that were given out, bounced.

Following this, he was questioned by officials of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), reportedly on a complaint of 'fraud' and 'cheating' for an amount of over Rs 100 crore. He was later granted conditional bail.