Mumbai firm catches Hyderabadi staff reselling King Kothi palace it owns

HYDERABAD: A Hyderabad resident working for a Mumbai company has been arrested by the Mumbai police for allegedly forging documents and defrauding their own organisation to resell the King Kothi palace to a Kashmir-based hospitality firm.
Mumbai-based construction firm, Niharika Infrastructure, has said that it had bought the heritage property worth Rs 300 crore measuring 28,106 square yards from the Nazri Bagh Palace Trust three years ago which its employees tried to resell.
The arrested accused, Sundaram Kolrukudro Ravindran (64) from Hyderabad, was arrested on Friday by officials of unit 9 of the Economic Offences Wing. He has been booked for cheating. Also, officials said they were looking for others — P Suresh Kumar, Mohammed Usman, Mukesh Gupta. The police also said they are examining the roles of two brothers of the Kashmir-based firm, Iris Hospitality — Amit Amla and Arjun Amla — in connection with this case.
When Niharika officials visited Hyderabad in June this year, they found out from the office of the Hyderabad registrar that the palace had recently been transferred to the name of Iris Hospitality. The company is yet to take physical possession of the property.
Evidence gathered from email exchange
During inquiries, it transpired that all the accused including two former employees of Niharika Infrastructure had made a sale deed with Iris Hospitality in January this year and sold the property,” said an official. “Ravindran and Suresh Kumar had signed on behalf of the company even though they were not authorised.”
The police said they stumbled upon “strong” evidence in the form of emails exchanged between Kumar and Ravindran which mention about the Hyderabad palace.
The police said that after registering the criminal offence they had issued lookout notices against the accused as they suspected that the accused would flee the country. This came to light recently when the immigration department in Hyderabad intimated the police that Ravindran had tried to board a flight to Singapore in October 10, but had been stopped by immigration officials due to the lookout notice against him.
The palace is a heritage property which was the final residence of the last Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan before its accession to India. The palace consists of the main building, now converted into a hospital, controlled by the government