The CBI came to know Rao had shifted to an ashram in Verul village (Representational)
A swindler's 20-year cat-and-mouse game with the law ended after his arrest by the CBI while he was allegedly living as a spiritual guru in a Tamil Nadu village - one of the many aliases he used to dodge the law enforcement agency.
To evade the law, V Chalapathi Rao allegedly created multiple fake identities, forged new Aadhaar cards, lived in many states and took up jobs as a computer operator and a loan recovery agent.
Rao was arrested on Sunday from Narsinganallur village in Tirunelveli before he could flee yet again, this time to another country, officials said on Monday.
The CBI had registered a case on May 1, 2002 against Rao, who was then working as a computer operator in SBI, Chandulal Biradari branch, Hyderabad on allegations that he had siphoned off Rs 50 lakh from the bank using fabricated quotations of electronic shops and fake salary certificates created in the names of his family members and close associates, and misappropriated the proceeds of the crime.
Two chargesheets were filed in 2006.
In the last 20 years, his family made an attempt to declare him dead, seven years after he went missing.
Rao, meanwhile, created an Aadhaar card in the name of one M Vineet Kumar and married again in Salem, officials said.
"His (first) wife, who is also an accused in the above fraud case, even lodged an FIR at Kamatipura Police Station dated July 10, 2004. She had also filed a petition in the Civil Court to declare the absconding accused as dead after completion of 7 years after PO allegedly went missing. In this regard, an order/decree too was passed by the concerned Civil Court of Hyderabad," a CBI Spokesperson said.
He was later declared a proclaimed offender, the official said.
Rao's second wife told the CBI that he was in touch with his son from his first wife but before the agency could reach him, he fled to Bhopal in 2014 where worked as loan recovery agent and then shifted to Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, where he worked in a school, the CBI said in a statement.
In the ensuing cat-and-mouse game, the CBI team tracked him to Rudrapur but returned empty handed as he had fled from Uttarakhand in 2016.
The agency then took help of Gmail's department that handles requests from law enforcement agencies by providing it with Aadhaar card information of M Vineet Kumar, officials said.
The CBI came to know Rao had shifted to an ashram in Verul village, Aurangabad but he had managed to get another Aadhaar card for a new alias, thus making it difficult to identify him In Aurangabad, he was living as Swamy Vidhitatmanand Teertha. Even as a spiritual guru, Rao had allegedly cheated the ashram where he was staying to the tune of Rs 70 lakh before fleeing to Bharatpur, Rajasthan in December 2021 where he continued to stay as an ascetic till July 8, 2024.
Rao allegedly kept changing phone numbers, around 8-10 times during the period, and even had planned to escape to Sri Lanka using the sea route.
Officials said he allegedly fled from Bharatpur and reached Narsinganallur village in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu to stay with one of his disciples and keep working on his plan to move to Sri Lanka.
His plans failed to take off as the CBI got information about his presence in the village where he was arrested by the agency, they said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)