Telangana Politician Arrested on Charges of Human Trafficking, Passport Forgery

Former MLA  T Jayaprakash Reddy was arrested on Sept. 11 by the Hyderabad Police on charges of human trafficking and traveling on forged passport and visa. Reddy has been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code involving impersonation, forgery, cheating, human trafficking, and the Passport Act.

Reddy was detained on Sept. 10 by the police for questioning. He was arrested later after the police received reliable information.

Reddy, who is also known as Jagga, had obtained a passport for himself, his wife Nirmala, daughter Jayalaxmi, and son Bharat Sai Reddy in 2004 when he was the Sangareddy MLA from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) party, according to the Hindu. He later allegedly affixed photos of three other persons on those passports, obtained U.S. visas and flew to New York with them, claiming that they were his family members.

The police said that Reddy did this for monetary benefits and was paid Rs 15 lakh, apart from the expenses incurred for transporting those he claimed to be his family to America, the report added.

A suo moto case has been registered against him, according to ANI.

Reddy was elected as a Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MLA of Sangareddy in 2004. At that time, Sangareddy was in the undivided Andhra Pradesh state. He later quit the party to join Congress after differences with TRS founder K. Chandrashekhar Rao. He became a Congress MLA in 2009 but lost to a TRS MLA in the next election in 2014. Sangareddy is in Telangana state now, which is headed by the TRS party.

Soon after his arrest, the opposition Congress party condemned the police action, and said that the caretaker TRS government headed by K. Chandrashekhar Rao in the state is misusing its power by arresting opposition leaders. “We strongly condemn the illegal arrest of the former MLA K Jagga Reddy for flimsy reasons. Even the local police station was not kept in the loop during his arrest. If at all he fudged records, how come the police has not given a notice to him?,” the party said in a statement.

At the time of his arrest, Reddy was making arrangements for Congress party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s meeting with members of the minority community on Sept. 12, according to India Today.