DPEP scam: Sarasa Devi the biggest scamster in 50 years history of Andhra Pradesh

2008
By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, April 10: Sarasa Devi, the prime accused in the Rs 40 crore DPEP scandal, is by far the biggest scamster in the 50 years history of the State.
Though the State has seen several scams by individuals, the amount has never surpassed Rs 10 crore. Even the scandal involving fly-by-night chit fund companies in the State is meagre when compared with the DPEP scam.
Sarasa Devi has obscured even the Krushi Bank scam with is put at Rs 35 crore. Though the Charminar Bank scam was more than Rs 400 crore, individual scamsters including its late chairman had not swindled more than Rs 7 crore each. Only Krushi Bank's chairman K Venkateswara Rao, who topped the list of CID's most wanted till recently, is the only person who comes anywhere near Sarasa Devi in terms of money involved in the white collar crime.
Incidentally, Sarasa Devi is the only woman so far who has baffled the investigating agencies with her meticulous planning to swindle public money. The other prominent "bad women" in the police records were those caught in running prostitution racket, chit fund companies and cheating. But none of them was a mastermind in their areas of operation.
The State has witnessed several women criminals including lady don Farah, drug peddler Durdana Begum and prostitution pimp Kalavathi. But the money involved was a few lakh of Rupees, Rs 25 lakh being the highest scam involving Kalavathi. She bought a house worth Rs 25 lakh in Posh Banjara Hills locality a decade ago.
Even now the two topmost "wanted criminals" in the State CID list are "worth" only a couple of crore Rupees. Manmohan Mongia, who tops the list, has cheated just Rs 1.46 crore while Huzefa Ibrahim Bahroin of Charminar Bank is not even wroth that much.
DPEP co-scamster V Subrahmanyam, who helped Sarasa Devi, had cheated the State government of less than Rs 3 crore. According to Sarasa Devi's confession, Subrahmanyam's "share" was Rs 2.75 crore.
There have been allegations of scams against political leaders and ministers in the past but those who levelled the charges failed to prove them before the media, leave alone in a court of law.