Hyderabad: After a 17-day chase across seven days, the Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) finally arrested R Devraj, secretary of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), from a star hotel in Pune early on Friday. He is a key accused in the alleged misappropriation of HCA funds and forgery case, along with five others. Devraj was produced before a magistrate at Malkajgiri court and has been sent to 14-day judicial remand.The 63-year-old had been on the run since July 9, when the CID arrested HCA president A Jagan Mohan Rao, club CEO Suneel Kante, treasurer CJ Srinivas Rao, and two top executives of the Hyderabad-based Sri Chakra Cricket Club — G Kavita and her husband Rajender Yadav — in connection with the same case. However, by the time the CID team reached Devraj’s house, he had already fled.Initially, the CID tracked his last known location to Keesara along the Outer Ring Road and sought help from the Rachakonda police to apprehend him. However, the attempt was unsuccessful. The team then began monitoring the suspect’s vehicle number and the phones of his possible accomplices.“A driver and a friend were accompanying Devraj, but they too had kept their phones switched off most of the time, making it difficult to track him,” said a CID official, adding that six special teams worked on tracking Devraj.The investigation picked up after the suspect’s vehicle was traced to Bhadrachalam. Senior CID officers contacted their counterparts to obtain toll plaza data. An alert later indicated that the suspect had entered Yanam, about 240 km from Bhadrachalam, but by the time the team arrived, the vehicle had already left. Devraj’s car was later tracked through Visakhapatnam, Nellore and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, and then to Kanchipuram and Ooty in Tamil Nadu, before entering Bengaluru.“In Anantapur, the accused switched to a different vehicle, but we managed to identify the new vehicle registration number too,” the CID investigator said. “From Karnataka, the vehicle proceeded to Goa, and from there, they started travelling towards Solapur in Maharashtra.” The official added that local police of all states extended their cooperation, as there was constant interstate coordination among senior officers.“By this time, we had gathered information through Fastag, toll plaza data, and the suspect’s phone conversations to realise that he, along with his accomplices, were travelling during the day and staying at hotels at night. There was a clear pattern — they were only staying at three-star or higher-rated hotels,” said the investigator.When the accused moved from Solapur to Pune, the local CID team took an early morning flight and reached the city around 1.30 am on Friday. “From Pune airport, our team went to a three-star hotel on the Pune-Hyderabad highway, verified hotel records and nabbed Devraj from his room at around 4 am,” the official added.After informing the local Pune police, the CID team brought him to Hyderabad later on Friday. “We produced him before the magistrate for judicial remand,” confirmed CID SP, S Srinivas, in an official statement.
