A decade ago, when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy in Bengaluru, Sukesh Chandrasekar, who was crazy about cars, used to carry a forged letter from the police commissioner stating that the teenager had permission to drive cars and motorcycles at “full throttle’’ in the state of Karnataka, say policemen familiar with the crime graph of cheating and fraud charted by the youth. Chandrasekar, 26, allegedly acted as the middleman for AIADMK leader T T V Dinakaran, who reportedly tried to bribe an Election Commission official to obtain the party’s two-leaves poll symbol for the Sasikala faction. Arrested in Delhi on Monday, Chandrasekar is a well-known trickster with a decade-long history of crime, replete with cases of fraud. Chandrasekar’s crime graph for cheating and fraud since 2007 has spanned the cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai. He has been arrested several times, but has returned to crime each time after being released on bail, shifting cities and changing his modus operandi. Prior to his arrest on Monday, he was arrested on charges of cheating in Bengaluru in 2007, 2009 and 2011, in Kolkata in 2013 for a case in Chennai, and in Mumbai in 2015. There are 15 cheating and fraud cases against him at present. Between 2007 and 2013, there were a dozen cases against Chandrasekar alias Balaji alias Sekar Reddy for posing as a relative of top politicians to con businessmen of as much as Rs 30 crore. According to police records, he has posed as the grandson of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, as the son of former union minister T R Baalu, former Tamil Nadu finance minister K Anbazhagan, former Karnataka minister Karunakara Reddy, former Karnataka chief secretary Sudhakar Rao, as the nephew of former Andhra chief minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy and as the secretary of former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa. However, the cases that have given Chandrasekar his notoriety are a couple of frauds he carried out in Chennai and Mumbai between 2013 and 2015, in alleged connivance with his long-time associate and fiancee, actress Maria Leena Paul, who has appeared in films like Madras Cafe. Chandrasekar and Paul were arrested in Kolkata and Delhi respectively in 2013 for cheating a couple in Chennai and a branch of the Canara Bank in Chennai of Rs 19 crore, after claiming to be officials from the Karnataka government interested in a sanitary napkin dispensation machine which the couple’s firm, Future Techiniks Pvt Ltd, had pioneered. They allegedly convinced the couple that they would be awarded a Rs 132 crore contract for dispensing sanitary napkins around Karnataka if they made an initial investment of Rs 19 crore. The couple obtained a loan from Canara Bank and transferred the funds to private accounts indicated by Chandrasekar. In June 2013, Chandrasekar and Paul were tracked to a farmhouse near New Delhi. While Paul was arrested, Chandrasekar managed to escape and was arrested a month later in Kolkata. The Delhi Police found that the couple were paying Rs 4 lakh as monthly rent for the farmhouse, and they were in the possession of nine high-end luxury cars. Paul was released on bail a month after her arrest, and Chandrasekar was also released on bail in 2015. In 2015, they were again arrested by the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police for floating a fake investment scheme and duping as many as 1,000 people of around Rs 100 crore. They were allegedly running a company called Lion Oak India, which illegally accepted cash deposits in 21 bogus schemes with the promise of huge returns. Last year, after she was released on bail in the Mumbai case, Paul claimed in press interviews that Chandrasekar was a “political strategist’’. According to a Superintendent of Police in Bengaluru, D Devaraj, who arrested Chandrasekar in 2011 for cheating dozens of businessmen in Tamil Nadu by posing as a secretary in the then Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa’s office and promising government contracts, the youth moved his fraud operations out of Bengaluru to Mumbai and Delhi following his arrest. “He has not ventured to Bengaluru for his operations since 2011. Most of his activity has been in other states,’’ he said. Chandrasekar’s father is a rubber contractor, part-time mechanic and automobile spare parts salesman in Bengaluru. In 2007 and 2011, both his parents were arrested in Bengaluru along with Chandrasekar for cheating people. In 2012, he is alleged to have cheated the Kerala textile firm, Emmanuel Silks, of Rs 20 lakh after promising to bring actress Katrina Kaif to attend an event. He is alleged to have first met Paul, an aspiring model who was studying to be a dentist in Bengaluru in 2011, by claiming to be a grandson of DMK’s Karunanidhi with connections in the Tamil film world. Chandrasekar is known to be glib talker who can slip into any southern language, as well as Hindi and English. “He rarely meets his victims in person. He conducts extensive research on contracts and companies and approaches them only over the telephone,’’ said Devaraj.
