Conman posing as Lokayukta official arrested

The Lokayukta and the City police, in a joint operation, arrested a man from Pattegarapalya, Vijayanagar on Monday for extorting money from government officials in the guise of a Lokayukta officer.

Senior police officials said Tyagaraju (alias Basavaraju and Chandrashekar), 58, was working as a cab driver in the City. His modus operandi was to identify vulnerable government officials, whom he learned about from friends, relatives or the media. He would collect details on these officials and cxall them.

Introducing himself as the Superintendent of Police of the Lokayukta, Tyagaraju, would establish his ‘credibility’ by dropping the names of Lokayukta officials in his conversations with the ‘target official’. He would then claim that a complaint was pending against the official in question and that a raid was imminent. He would then ask the official to meet him at the location of his (Tyagaraju’s) choice. When the official met him, Tyagaraju would extort sums between Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000 from them.

H N Satyanarayana Rao, ADGP, Lokayukta, told Deccan Herald that the Lokayukta police were interrogating the suspect to find out the names of officers he had extorted money from. He said that Tyagaraju had been arrested in connection with similar cases in 2008 and 2009 and that he was facing trial in these cases.

“Last year, the Lokayukta police had arrested another man, Murugappa Nangappa Kumbar from Belgaum, for posing as a Lokayukta official and extorting money. Tyagaraju is less sophisticated,” Rao said.

According to the Vijayanagar police, Tyagaraju had recently purchased two cars using the money gained from his con job. He had rented out the cars to be used as cabs. He had also recently built a new house in Pattegarapalya.