The police are hunting for another Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MLA, Soyam Bapurao, in connection with forging of passports and smuggling of people abroad. One party MLA is already under arrest on these charges.

Bapurao is an MLA from the Boath constituency. While police are investigating his documents at the Regional Passport Office, the MLA himself has gone missing, and police do not know where he is.

Bapurao incidentally also belongs to the group of MLAs who recently rebelled against TRS chief K Chandrasekhara Rao and who promoted their own candidate for the Legislative Council elections.

After the human trafficking scam broke, media offices around the city were anonymously delivered documents claiming that many TRS leaders, including deputy leader A Narendra, were involved in the scam.

While the party suspended Narendra immediately, saying that he put the future of the Telangana state in jeopardy, Nerella MLA Kasipeta Lingaiah surrendered before the police, and was remanded to judicial custody. The police, however, have not filed any case against Narendra, saying there wasn’t any conclusive evidence.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh said: “We are investigating all the documents and allegations made against MLAs and MPs regardless of which party they are from. It will take some time, as we are verifying whether the pictures on their passports match the actual owners, and we are still trying to obtain the original photographs of all the passport holders.”

While the police have not filed any case against Bapurao yet, sources said they might do so either late tonight, or on May 2. According to sources, Bapurao sent some women and children, mostly from Gujarat, abroad.

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