A former MLA and whip of the Telangana Congress, T. Jayaprakash Reddy alias Jagga Reddy was arrested on Monday by the Hyderabad police on charges of alleged human trafficking and forging fake passports. The police arrested Reddy from Patancheru and later took him to the Market police station, Secunderabad for questioning.
The former MLA has been booked on allegations that he had trafficked three persons from Hyderabad to USA using passports made in the name of his wife, daughter and son in 2004, when he was with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). He later jumped to the BJP and then joined the Congress in 2015.
Reddy had undertaken a trip to America in 2004 and a man and two women had travelled with him at the time. Police are trying to verify the identity of those who had travelled with Reddy and stayed back in America, while Reddy returned to Hyderabad.
Police have booked a suo-moto case against Reddy under charges of impersonation, forgery, cheating, human trafficking and the Passport Act. He will be produced at a local court in Nampally on Tuesday.
“We got information that Jagga Reddy trafficked three persons from Hyderabad to America using passports secured on the names of his wife, daughter and son,” a police officer associated with the investigation told The Hindu.
Police sources told The Hindu that the American government had data on illegal immigrants from India. The data when analysed suggested that three persons had entered America using forged passports.
Based on this information, the Hyderabad Commissioner’s Task Force launched an investigation and stumbled upon documents that suggested that Reddy had procured passports for his family members using forged documents. The officials then picked up Reddy for questioning on Monday.
Reddy was instrumental in arranging Rahul Gandhi's mega rally at Sangareddy in 2017. In the run-up to the Telangana state elections, he was tasked with setting up meetings between the minority community in the state and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on September 12.