BANGALORE: With the CBI arresting former minister and mining baron G Janardhana Reddy on illegal mining charges, life has come a full circle for the Bellary Reddy brothers whose rise — from struggling businessmen to millionaire mining tycoons to politicians with enormous clout — was worthy of a blockbuster script. Just 11 years ago the Reddys — G Karunakar Reddy, Janardhana Reddy and Somashekhara Reddy — were nobody in the political and business maps of Karnataka. Born to a police constable, Reddys were struggling to establish a small business to feed their family. They dabbled with several businesses from newspaper to financial services to taking up civil contracts. But nothing worked. However, fortune smiled on them when Janardhana Reddy decided to plunge into the mining business by floating Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) after getting a mining lease from Andhra Pradesh (AP) government.The timing of the Reddys’ entry into mining business was so perfect that iron ore prices started soaring world-wide owing to the construction boom in China ahead of 2009 Olympics. Prices of iron ore shot to upto `3,000 to `4,000 per tonne from just `250- `400. Riding on the boom, the Reddy brothers made a killing out of iron ore export and amassed a wealth running into several thousand crores — evident by the fleet of high-end cars, including Rolls Royce and Land Cruisers. They also own two helicopters.Soon, they started calling the shots in state politics and established themselves as a political force to reckon with in Karnataka. Now that they are caught in a legal web, it appears that the going will become tough for them.
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