Tirumala police register cheating case against MLC Sheik Sabjee

Tirumala: Tirumala police registered a case of cheating against MLC (Teachers) Sheik Sabjee and two others including his PA (A1) and Dega Raju (A2) based on a complaint from the TTD Vigilance department on Friday.

Sabjee was recently elected from the teachers' constituency (Eluru) as an Independent candidate. The TTD vigilance officials grew suspicious after a series of recommendation letters were received from the MLC for sanction of darshan tickets and took up a probe leading to the busting of the darshan ticket racket.

After registering the case, Tirumala Two Town police station issued a notice to the MLC who was brought to the station where CI Chandrasekahar enquired him on the charge of cheating TTD and a pilgrim party. The MLC denied the charges and told the police that he too wanted a probe on the misuse of his letters apparently in an attempt to make someone a scapegoat in the darshan ticket racket which was busted by TTD vigilance department.

Police said that the complainant S Padmanabhan, assistant vigilance & security officer, vigilance wing, Tirumala, stated that a pilgrim Suvarnapalli Venkateshappa Ravindra complained to the vigilance department that the MLC and 2 others colluded with each other and cheated him by collecting more amount for the darshan tickets.

The vigilance officer said the accused A-1 to A-3 viz., 1) Venugopal, PA to MLC, 2) Dega Raju and 3) MLC Shaik Sabjee cheated the pilgrim party Ravindra and also TTD institution by creating and submitting fake Aadhar card details as genuine and got sanctioned darshan tickets.

The trio, the vigilance officer, said in the complaint that, demanded and received an amount of Rs 1,07,000/- as an excess amount than prescribed rates (of the tickets).

He said the officials who grew suspicious after more letters were received from the MLC recommending darshan tickets took up a probe in which they found the MLC issued 19 letters recommending darshan tickets. Police registered a case with Cr.No 53/2023, U/s 420, 468, 471 IPC r/w 34 IPC and are investigating the case.

Interestingly, it was found in the TTD enquiry that all those who availed tickets against the MLC recommendation letter were from other States including TN and Karnataka.

Sources said in all about 150 darshan tickets were issued against the MLC recommendation letter in the last one month resulting in the TTD officials suspecting something fishy behind the MLC's recommendation letters. The TTD vigilance officials kept a watch on Venugopal, acting as a PRO of the MLC, and also Raju, working as driver, and were able to crack the case.

When Sabjee came to Tirumala on Friday along with a six-member pilgrim party including Ravindra from Bengaluru on Friday for darshan, the vigilance officials took him for enquiry after which, a complaint was lodged at Tirumala Two Town police station.

Ravindra in the vigilance enquiry spilled the beans and admitted that he gave money for darshan tickets. The verification of the Aadhar card of Ravindra and five others were found tampered to show the pilgrim party is from Hyderabad while they were from Bengaluru, revealing the fraud behind the recommendation letter of the MLC.