Vijayawada: N. Venkata Raghu, Director, Town & Country Planning for AP, was arrested on Tuesday after day-long searches at 23 houses owned by him and his benamis where properties worth Rs500 crore were detected.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) teams under the supervision of Director Genenal RP Thakur conducted raids on the houses of Raghu and Nalluri Venkatasivaprasad, an official in the department who acted as a benami for the Director, in Vijaywada, Gannavaram, Mangalagiri and Shirdi simultaneously since Monday morning.

The searches continued overnight and the assets, which include dozens of house plots, more than 20 flats, eight kilos of gold jewellary, 23kg of silver articles, and five infrastructure companies on the names of family members were detected. The value of the properties so far detected is estimated to be over Rs100 crore as per official rates, but it could be more than Rs500 crore in the market.

Raghu’s bank lockers are yet to be opened.

As Raghu is slated for retirement this month end, he is reported to have collected crores of rupees from the builders and realtors in the Capital Region areas for sanctioning construction plans without any verification for compliance with rules or regulations. His benami Sivaprasad and his wife Gayatri are said to have collected the money on behalf of the state's top ranking official in the Town Planning department. In return for their help, Raghu gave them a big chunk in his bounty, officials said.

ACB slueths also found a bunch of air tickets booked for Singapore, Malaysia and Hongkong for celebrating Raghu's retirement on a grand scale.

Raghu is being produced in an ACB court in Vizag while Sivaprasad was arrested and produced in a court in Vijayawada.

It's learnt that the ACB will raid another woman official who is suspected to be an associate of Raghu and Sivaprasad.