Me and my wife only own seven-and-half acres land: AP DGP

Andhra Pradesh DGP V Dinesh Reddy today said he along with his wife owned only seven-and-half acres pertaining to eight sale deeds out of the 542 deeds (1,500 acres) mentioned in a petition filed by a senior IPS officer against him in the Supreme Court.

In the backdrop of CBI starting a probe against Reddy on allegations of acquiring disproportionate assets, the AP Police chief clarified, "these 800 odd pages pseudonymous petition (filed by the IPS officer Umesh Kumar) contains 542 sale deeds pertaining to 1,500 acres of land belonging to others not connected to me. Out of them only eight sale deeds pertaining to seven-and-half acres belong to us (he and his wife)."

"The petition was sent to Union Home Secretary about 2-3 months before I was to be appointed as DGP in June 2011," the DGP said.

"An investigation by AP CID found Umesh Kumar had forged the signature of Rajya Sabha MP M A Khan on his letterhead, levelling allegations against me," Reddy claimed.
Subsequently, the CID filed a chargesheet and charged Kumar and two others with forging the letter of the Rajya Sabha member and the case is currently on in a criminal court here, he said.

The Apex Court on September 6 ordered a CBI probe against Dinesh Reddy for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets along with his wife and slammed the state government for not conducting any probe against Reddy when copy of a complaint against him was forwarded by the Centre.

A bench of justices B S Chauhan and S A Bobde directed the CBI to conduct the probe and file a status report within four weeks. The bench said probe is needed on the complaint even though it may be "forged or fabricated" as there was substance in the allegation levelled against Reddy.

It said, "Even though the complaint was bogus, however, the sale deeds...have not been found to be fabricated documents".

"The complaint may be forged or fabricated, but it is nobody's case that the copies of sale deeds annexed alongwith the complaint were not genuine. While issuing direction to hold inquiry/investigation as to who had fabricated the complaint and forged the signatures of M A Khan, the allegations of acquiring properties by Reddy have been abandoned and unattended altogether," the court said.

During the hearing in the case, the apex court had questioned the state government on why probe into the allegations was not done.