Fake Official, Real Scam: Fraudster with 43 Cases Nabbed in Hyderabad
Hyderabad Task Force nabs Thota Balaji Nayudu, a fraudster with 43 cases who posed as a government official to scam legislators and police.
In a major crackdown on white-collar crime, the Commissioner's Task Force (Golconda zone) and the Film Nagar Police have arrested a notorious conman, Thota Balaji Nayudu, who spent years deceiving high-profile targets. The Hyderabad fraudster Thota Balaji Nayudu specialized in impersonating senior government officials to siphon money from legislators and members of the Hyderabad City Police.
The Art of the Deception
The 53-year-old suspect, who operated under multiple aliases including Naidu, Anil Kumar, and Mallareddy, employed a calculated method to find his victims. He sourced the contact details of public representatives from various websites to build a target list.
Once he had the numbers, Nayudu would call them pretending to be an Additional Secretary in the Finance Department at the Secretariat. To make his pitch believable, he leveraged the names of legitimate government initiatives, such as the CM Unemployment Schemes and the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana. Under the guise of implementing these schemes, he coerced his victims into making monetary contributions.
From Engineer to Convicted Fraudster
Surprisingly, Nayudu possesses a professional background. A graduate of JNTU Kakinada, he once held a respectable position at NTPC Ramagundam. He started his career as a Junior Engineer and climbed the ranks to become an Assistant Executive Engineer and later an Assistant Engineer.
However, his professional life took a dark turn in 2008 when he was apprehended by the Anti-Corruption Bureau and subsequently handed over to the CBI. It was after this downfall that he began targeting legislators for his scams. His criminal history is extensive; by 2016, the Banjara Hills Police had already invoked the PD Act against him.
A Massive Criminal Record
The scale of Nayudu's activities is staggering, with a total of 43 cases registered against him across various police stations in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Following his latest confession, police have linked him to two specific recent cases:
- Film Nagar Police Station (Cr. No. 505/2026): Charged under Sections 318(4) and 319(2) of the BNS, as well as Sections 66(C) and 66(D) of the IT Act.
- Mancherial Town Police Station, Ramagundam (Cr. No. 259/2026): Charged under Section 318(4) of the BNS and Section 66(D) of the IT Act.
The Operation
The arrest was a coordinated effort supervised by M Mahesh, Inspector of Police (Task Force, Golconda Zone), and A Ramesh, Inspector of Police (Film Nagar Police Station). The actual operation was executed by SI G Vijayanand of the Task Force and SI Shaik Saleem of the Film Nagar Police, supported by their respective teams.