Miscreants who set godown on fire held

The Vanasthalipuram police arrested seven people in connection with the fire mishap at a pesticide godown at Auto Nagar during the last week of September and seized `3.14 crore worth pesticides and five vans. Eight more accused involved in the case are still at large.

The police said that the prime accused wanted to take revenge on the company with which he was doing business.

During the early hours on September 23, the fire broke out at Crystal Crop Protection company’s godown where a huge quantity of pesticide was stored. Prima facie, the Vanasthalipuram police understood that the godown was set ablaze by unidentified persons to cause loss owner Nanda Kishore Agarwal. A case was registered accordingly for the probe.

LB Nagar DCP Sanpreeth Singh said, for the last three years, the prime accused Seege Yellareddy of Kurnool was into the pesticides business.

Since his tie-up with Crystal Crop Protection company, Yellareddy did a business of about `12 crore by distributing pesticides.

Further, he opened 10 shops in TS and AP and ran into losses. His debts also increased to around `7 crore and owed Mr Kishore money.

The zonal manager of the company Venkata Ramana Reddy was a close associate of Yellareddy and asked him to pay `50 lakh so that he provides the pesticides worth `1 crore. But he was cheated by the latter.

“Yellareddy hatched a plan of stealing the pesticide from the godown and asked his friends to assist him. They hired 23 labourers from the outskirts and hired five vans and went to the company.

After moving the material worth `3.14 crore, the vans were dispersed to Kurnool and concealed in a godown belonging to Bhuma Sandeep Reddy, cousin of AP tourism minister Bhuma Akhila Priya.