Man arrested for selling 15 acres of beach to IOC
Chennai   16-Jul-2010

The Tiruvallur police on Thursday arrested a multimillionaire for selling 15 acres of beach to the IndianOil. Devados Reddy, whom police say has properties worth over Rs 500 crore, struck a deal with IOC which was looking for land to set up an LPG bottling plant. He signed an MoU selling 166 acre of land to the company.

Though Devados had 40 acres of the land in his name, he went ahead taking power of attorney from his labourers, who own lands adjacent to his land and created forged documents for 15 acres of beach, which also had a government canal in it. Known for his smart ways, he presented several bundles of documents to te IOC management, each document having a land area of two to five acres. When the IOC management scanned the documents, they found some of them suspicious Added to that were the allegations against Devados by some labourers, who had by then sensed that they had been cheated by Reddy.

Following this, Pandian, deputy general manager (operations), IOC, lodged a complaint against Reddy with the DGP and SP of Tiruvallur. Police asked the revenue department and the IOC to resurvey the area and found out that 15 acres of beach had been included in the deal. They then arrested Reddy from his new BMW at Minjur on Thursday after blocking the traffic. He was remanded to judicial custody. Police said there is a similar case of fraud pending against Reddy.