Kola Mohan wrote to Vajpayee seeking tax concessions

Syed Amin Jafri in Vijayawada

The Vijayawada police have made substantial progress in their investigations into cases of cheating and forgery registered against the self-proclaimed Euro Lottery winner Kola Venkata Krishna Mohan.

Kola Mohan has been remanded to judicial custody till December 27 by the fifth metropolitan magistrate K B Narsimhulu and is lodged at the district jail at Gandhinagar.

Vijayawada Police Commissioner Sudeep Lakhtakia said four complaints have been lodged against Kola Mohan so far. The first was registered at the Patamata police station on November 22 by a certain Kolli Gandhi who claimed that Kola Mohan had cheated him of Rs 1.45 million. The second case was registered at the Governorpet police station by the Andhra Bank on November 25. The Patamata police received another complaint on December 1 from N V Venugopal, yet another creditor of Kola Mohan. A fourth complaint was filed against Kola Mohan, once again with the Patamata police station, a few days later.

The Patamata police interrogated Kola Mohan for two days (December 8 and 9) before handing him over to the Governorpet police station where he was quizzed for two more days (December 10 and 11).

Preliminary investigations have revealed that Kola Mohan had played the lottery hoax once earlier too, albeit on a smaller scale.

During his stay in Palvancha in Khammam district many years ago, Kola Mohan misled his friends into believing that he had won the Rs100,000 Bhagyalakshmi Lottery. He then proceeded to borrow large amounts from them.

The cops during their raids on Kola Mohan's house picked up documents relating to some foreign lotteries, including the Euro Guild and the Lotto Games. They also seized a lap-top worth Rs 140,000 from Kola Mohan's ultra-modern office.

They have also just concluded interrogation of two influential persons said to be very close to the con man - Veeramachineni Kesava Prasad alias Chanti and Chintapalli Kutumba Rao alias Bujji.

One of these 'close friends', who had lent Rs 20 million to Kola Mohan, had accompanied him to England last year in April. Kola Mohan took this creditor to an international bank in London. To make him believe that the branch was the one where he had deposited the prize money of Euro Lottery, he went inside the manager's chamber and spoke to him for a few minutes.

Later, Kola Mohan took him to a building where he said he had played the Lotto game. A glow sign --Euro Lotto Game-- was hanging at the entrance. The friend learnt subsequently that the Lotto Game Hall was in fact a community centre.

Kola Mohan has named a certain Randy Williams, purportedly the managing director of London-based Exhange Control Services Limited, as the one who helped him with the Euro Lottery documents.

Quite interestingly, soon after Kola Mohan claimed he had won the Euro-lottery, the Income Tax authorities directed him to pay Rs 320 million towards tax. Police have now seized copies of some letters written by him to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha seeking tax concessions.

Congress spokesperson and former minister Gali Muddu Krishnama Naidu has alleged that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu too had written to Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha urging him to exempt the Euro Lottery winner from income tax. This, however, could not be confirmed.

The city police too have come in for sharp criticism from various quarters for providing three gunmen for Kola Mohan's security. "Yes, we provided him with three gunmen. At that time nobody had raised any doubts about the genuineness of his claims. Tell me, how can we be faulted?" asked a senior police official in Vijaywada.

After Kola Mohan disappeared in November, Srinivasa Rao, one of the three gunmen, was suspended for having failed to inform his bosses about the con man's movements.

Six police teams have now been sent to Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Bangalore, Thiruvanantapuram and Hyderabad to gather more evidence against about Kola Mohan.

ALSO SEE:

A website, a gambler and his Rs 840 million fraud

AP orders probe into Euro lottery winner's deals