The Income Tax department’s recovery officer for the Bengaluru central region has put up 11 cars and a motorcycle owned by serial conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar, who is housed in a Delhi prison, on auction to recover Rs 308.48 crore of income tax dues from the high-flying trickster.
The cars, which include eight luxury ones like a Rolls Royce Ghost, Bentley Bentayga, Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini Urus, Escalade, a Mercedes AMG and Jaguar, have been put up for e-auction on November 28, the I-T department said in a recent auction notice.
The Rolls Royce bearing a Delhi registration number has a reserve price of Rs 1.74 crore, a Bentley bearing a Delhi registration number valued at Rs 83.35 lakh, a Range Rover bearing a Tamil Nadu registration number valued at Rs 44.43 lakh, a Lamborghini with a Delhi registration number valued at Rs 38.52 lakh and a Jaguar Coupe with a Pondicherry registration number at Rs 31.07 lakh.
The other cars in the lot are a Toyota Prado bearing a Tamil Nadu registration number valued at Rs 22.5 lakh, a BMW M5 with a Pondicherry registration number valued at Rs 18.79 lakh, a Toyota Fortuner with a Tamil Nadu registration number and a reserve price of Rs 15.31 lakh, an Innova Chrysta with a Kerala registration number with a reserve price of Rs 11.89 lakh, a Nissan Teana bearing a Tamil Nadu registration number valued at Rs 2.03 lakh; a Porsche with a West Bengal registration number valued at Rs 5.08 lakh and a Ducati Diavel motorcycle with an Odisha registration number valued at Rs 3.56 lakh.
The cars seized by the income tax authorities during the investigation have been lying in the premises of the Karnataka wing of the I-T department since November 2017 — on account of a pending case regarding the source of funds for the purchase of the luxury cars.
The vehicles were seized by the I-T officials in 2017 following investigations of an alleged Rs 50 crore bribery deal where Chandrasekhar had claimed he would get the AIADMK election symbol allotted to a faction of the party through the ECI.
Chandrasekhar is now accused by the Delhi Police and the ED of extorting nearly Rs 200 crore from a pharmaceutical executive’s wife and using the illicit funds to lavish gifts on actresses like Bollywood star Jaqueline Fernandes and to buy a beach home in Chennai and a fleet of luxury cars.
Who is Sukesh Chandrashekhar and his modus operandi
The 37-year-old college drop out, who has a penchant for a flamboyant lifestyle, has roots in the city of Bengaluru and a history of cheating people by claiming to be linked to high-ranking officials.
In 2017, while he was lodged in the Tihar Jail — for attempting to bribe officials of the Election Commission of India to obtain the AIADMK election symbol for a faction lead by TTV Dinakaran — I-T authorities found out that the conman had purchased a fleet of luxury cars worth over Rs 5 crore.
The conman is alleged to have purchased the cars after his arrest in April 2017 in the ECI bribery case. On October 12, 2017, the I-T department seized two luxury cars – a Bentley and a Jaguar – in Bengaluru. In November 2017, the I-T department found six more cars and a motorcycle linked to Chandrashekhar stashed at a private property in Kochi.
“During post search inquiries, it was found that Sukesh bought luxury vehicles by investing more than Rs 5 crore in cash in the months of August (2017) and it was also found that one Navas from Kochi, the key associate of Sukesh, is the custodian of these vehicles,” I-T sources had stated in November 2017.
“Navas deposed that all these (cars) belong to Sukesh. Navas led us to these vehicles parked in different places in Kochi and the same were seized,” I-T sources had said at the time.
Chandrasekar’s crime graph for cheating and fraud has spanned across cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, New Delhi and Mumbai since 2007. He has been arrested several times but has continued his cheating spree every time he was released from prison.
The alleged Rs 200 crore extortion case, in which the conman is now accused, happened while he was lodged in prison.
“Sukesh has been a part of the crime world since the age of 17. He has multiple FIRs against him and is presently lodged in Rohini Jail. Despite being lodged in jail, Sukesh Chandrashekhar has not stopped conning people,” the ED said in an official statement on September 23, 2021, following the seizures of wealth linked to the conman.
Chandrasekhar uses a modus operandi of calling up his wealthy victims in the pretext of being a high government official or an aide of a top official and then offering crisis management or business opportunities to the victims for high payments. “Sukesh Chandrasekhar has extorted money to the tune of Rs 200 crore in this manner,” the ED said in its statement in 2021.
There are as many as 20 cheating and fraud cases against Chandrasekar at present. According to police records, he has posed as the grandson of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, as the sons of former Union minister T R Baalu, former Tamil Nadu finance minister K Anbazhagan, former Karnataka minister Karunakara Reddy, as a nephew of former Andhra chief minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy and as the secretary of former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa in order to con people.
The vehicles were seized by the I-T officials in 2017 following investigations of an alleged Rs 50 crore bribery deal where Chandrasekhar had claimed he would get the AIADMK election symbol allotted to a faction of the party through the ECI. 
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