Loan recovery agent, school staff, guru...: Telangana conman on the run for 20 years in SBI fraud case finally nabbed in Tirunelveli

CHENNAI: A clever fraudster who managed to give law enforcement officials the slip for a record 20 years and was planning to flee the country soon was finally caught this week.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested the accused, V Chalapathi Rao, who was living under two aliases while possessing several phone numbers, across the two decades, from Tirunelveli. The many identities he took on include that of a loan recovery agent, a school staff member, and a spiritual guru at an ashram. His luck inevitably ran out and he was picked up from a house belonging to one of his 'disciples' in a Tirunelveli village, as stated in a press release from the CBI.

In 2002, Chalapathi Rao was working as a computer operator at the State Bank of India's Chandulal Biradari branch in Hyderabad from where he siphoned off Rs 50 lakh by producing fabricated quotations from electronic shops and fake salary certificates created in the names of his family members and close associates, and misappropriated the crime proceeds. The CBI registered a case against him on May 1 in the matter, and upon completion of investigation, filed two charge sheets in 2006.

However, the man had vanished in 2004 and his wife, who is also an accused in the bank fraud case, had lodged a missing complaint. Seven years later, she filed a petition in a civil court in Hyderabad seeking to declare the absconding accused as dead.

Rao was declared a proclaimed offender (PO) in April 2013 in the CBI case. Subsequently, his wife obtained a stay from the High Court of Telangana over efforts to attach his property.

Though the man kept playing a cat-and-mouse game with the sleuths by frequently moving to new hideouts under different names and contact numbers, the CBI relentlessly pursued leads across the years and finally managed to nab him recently from a village in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu.

As per information gathered by the central probe agency, in 2007, a few years after he went underground, Rao travelled to Salem and assumed a new name (M Vineet Kumar), obtained an Aadhaar number and married a woman there. Through her, the CBI later learnt that he was in regular touch with his son born from his first marriage.

However, before they could track him down, Rao left Salem for Bhopal in 2014 and started working as a loan recovery agent. Continuing his 'adventures', the man moved to Rudrapur in Uttarakhand where he worked in a school. A CBI team even visited Rudrapur but it was too late as he had left the place in 2016.

Later, using details of email ids and the Aadhar number taken under the alias of M Vineet Kumar, the CBI approached Gmail's Law Enforcement Department. And that's when they found out that Rao had shifted base to an ashram in Verul village, Aurangabad and had become 'Swamy Vidhitatmanand Teertha'. He had obtained yet another Aadhaar card based on his new identity.

However, in December 2021, he made off with Rs 70 lakh that he swindled from the ashram.

Subsequently, Rao was learnt to have gone to Bharatpur in Rajasthan where he continued to be known as the spiritual leader 'Swamy Vidhitatmanand Teertha'. He stayed there till July 8 this year and changed his contact numbers at least 8 to 10 times, the CBI said.

Thereafter, he came down south to Tamil Nadu to the house of one of his followers in Tirunelveli's Narsinganallur village, from where he was working out a plan to escape to Sri Lanka by sea. But unfortunately for Rao, the central probe agency sniffed out his presence in the village and apprehended him on August 4, thwarting his grand plans.