Raghav Magunta, son of YSR Congress Party MP from Andhra Pradesh's Ongole Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy, recorded false statement before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the Delhi excise policy scam and also destroyed crucial evidence to derail the probe, the ED has claimed in the charge sheet, a source said.

Magunta was placed under arrest on February 10 this year by the ED.

He was grilled at length and later the ED filed a second supplementary charge sheet naming him as one of the accused.

The ED has claimed that Magunta recorded a fake statement under section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The statement was pertaining to his control of Magunta Agro Farms and Pixie Enterprises.

"It was a fictitious account which he told us. We learnt it during the course of investigation. We seized his phone, but he had deleted the entire data. It was crucial evidence which he destroyed. His intention was to derail the investigation," said the source.

Later, the ED retrieved his chats with Buchi Babu from Babu's cell phone. The ED source said that Magunta's chats were intact in the phone of Buchi Babu while in his own cell phone there was no data, which proved that crucial evidence was deliberately destroyed. It was a crucial chat which the ED needed to prove the duo's guilt.

"Magunta has changed his mobile phone multiple times during the period of commission of the predicate offence and later on. Most importantly the phone containing the data of the relevant period of scam has not been found," the ED has claimed [IANS/NS]