Renowned Telugu actor Venkatesh Daggubati and three family members were charged by the Hyderabad Police on Sunday with “illegally” demolishing a hotel that they had rented to someone else.
In addition to Venkatesh, his nephew Rana Daggubati, who portrayed the main antagonist in the movie “Baahubali,” has also been charged by the police. Both Rana’s brother, producer Abhiram, and father, producer Suresh, have also been charged. A day after a local court ordered the police to bring charges against the Daggubatis, the action was taken.
The issue concerns the Daggubati family’s demolition of their Deccan Kitchen Hotel in Hyderabad’s Film Nagar neighborhood in January 2024. Nanda Kumar, the person who had rented the property, however, went to court and claimed that Deccan Kitchen had been demolished in defiance of a pending injunction from the City Civil Court and against Telangana high court orders.
Nanda Kumar also asserted that the demolition cost him ₹20 crore. The police were then directed to look into the situation by the local court. Nanda Kumar is an accused in the alleged poaching of MLAs of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now the Bharat Rashtra Samithi) in 2022.
A section of the Deccan Kitchen Hotel and surrounding buildings built by Kumar were demolished by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in November 2022 on the grounds that they were “unauthorised.” The Telangana high court then directed the Hyderabad civic body to preserve the status quo in July 2023 after requesting an explanation from GHMC for the action.
