My Son Is Innocent, Has Been Framed: Vijayarama Rao

CBI former director and former minister K Vijayarama Rao on Wednesday claimed that his son Kalyan Srinivasa Rao, who was booked in the Rs 304-crore bank defrauding case, was totally innocent and had nothing to do with the scam.

Lamenting that his son was falsely implicated in the case and arrested due to political vendetta, the former minister said that he would not name anybody for now as that could lead to problems for his son's release, but that the people would know everything in the coming days, as he would disclose everything to the courts as well as to the media very soon.

"My life is an open book. My son has nothing to do with the multi-crore bank defrauding case. I had allowed the sleuths to search his house as per the law as the the CBI officials claimed to have some evidence," he said.

As far as his assets were concerned, Vijayarama Rao said that he owned some lands and a house in his native village, in which his son had a share.

It may be mentioned here that the CBI took Kalyan Srinivas into custody for questioning last week. The bank loan in dispute was purportedly taken by Srinivas for a Sujana group company founded by TDP's Union Minister Y Sujana Chowdary, who is already embroiled in yet another bank loan scam. A Mauritius-based bank filed a case in the Hyderabad High Court and city courts against Chowdary and his company, and he was summoned by the court to appear for a hearing.

Earlier in the week, Srinivas Rao's sister Annapurna also denied charges against her brother, and said that it was a conspiracy hatched by her father Vijayarama Rao's political opponents to tarnish the latter's clean public image earned through 30 years of service. When the loan was taken in 2012, Srinivas was working on a salary for the Sujana group, she said, and said that he had left the job upon the advice of their father who did not have a good opinion of the company.

Vijayarama Rao, who was a minister in a TDP government in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, recently joined the ruling TRS in Telangana.