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The Enforcement Directorate on Friday, August 1, announced that it has seized passbooks, debit cards and cheque books belonging to more than 200 'mule' bank accounts linked to the sheep rearing and distribution scam that is alleged to have taken place under the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) led Telangana government.
The ED said that the bank accounts are also linked to an illegal betting app via which money was being laundered. The agency also announced that it recovered materials that indicate "kickbacks" being paid to some government officials and others.
The ED’s probe was a result of FIRs registered by the Telangana Anti-Corruption Bureau in December 2023, after the state Assembly elections which resulted in Congress coming to power.
The Sheep Rearing Development Scheme was launched by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in April 2017 to provide a sustainable livelihood to shepherd families (hailing from the Gorre Kuruma caste).
The ED had raided eight locations in Hyderabad including officials linked to BRS government’s animal husbandry minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav on July 30 of this year. An ACB FIR had alleged that Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Kalyan who was working with Talasani Srinivas, had removed some records from the department office by breaking into the premises.
The probe found that government funds were "illegally diverted" to the bank accounts of bogus vendors.
An Audit Report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India found several irregularities in the implementation of the sheep distribution scheme like non-maintenance of beneficiary wise details, improper record of invoices pertaining to transportation invoices and payments, payments against invoices containing fake/ passenger vehicles/ non-transport vehicle registration numbers, duplicate tags allotted to sheep units, sheep units allotted to dead/non-existent persons etc.