Rajgopal at Bhubaneswar railway station on Sunday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, June 10: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Bhubaneswar, on Friday arrested a businessman from Hyderabad who had allegedly cheated a nationalised bank of Rs 50 lakh in the late 80s.

Rajgopal, 60, a mechanical engineer, now owns property worth over Rs 100 crore and a dozen luxury cars.

He had been evading arrest by changing his name and address in the last two decades. He is also involved in at least four cheating cases in Chennai and the CBI had been looking for him all these years.

CBI officer S.N. Rath said the accused had floated two companies in Bhubaneswar in the eighties and had secured Rs 50 lakh from a bank on the basis of “fake documents” in 1988. Since the suspect had offered Rs 2 crore as guarantee for a loan of Rs 50 lakh, the bank suspected foul play and had begun examining the documents that were found to be fake.

Following a complaint, the CBI registered a case against B. Rajgopal, his associate K.V. Vijaykumar, bank manager B. Jayaram Setty and another bank employee, K. V. Shashidhar.

The CBI subsequently arrested Jayaram and Vijayakumar and charge-sheeted them in 1993. The other accused, Shashidhar, died during the investigation. But the CBI could not track down Rajgopal. Jayaram was let off by the court and Vijay Kumar was sentenced to five years imprisonment. The court had declared Rajgopal a proclaimed offender.

Rajgopal was produced before the CBI court in Hyderabad on Friday. After the court granted him the remand, he was brought to Bhubaneswar. “We will produce him before the CBI court here on Monday,” said an officer accompanying the team.