In yet another blow to the debt-ridden Deccan Chronicle Holdings Private Limited, the CBI on Tuesday registered a cheating case against its chairman, T Venkatrami Reddy. Vice-chairman and managing director of the Hyderabad-based firm T Vinayak Ravi Reddy was also booked.

Both cases are based on a recent complaint lodged by Canara Bank.

According to the complaint, the accused secured a loan of Rs 1,230 crore from the bank by furnishing forged documents. The bank stated that the fraud was committed at its prime corporate branch in Secunderabad.

The CBI pressed charges against the accused under sections 120-B read with 420, 468 and 471 of the IPC. The action came a day after a CBI team from Bangalore conducted raids on the corporate office of DCHL in Secunderabad on Monday. The searches went on till late night during which the CBI sleuths were understood to have seized some documents.

The DCHL, whose flagship newspaper The Deccan Chronicle is one of the largest selling English dailies in the region, has been under the CBI scanner ever since Canara Bank found irregularities in the company’s balance sheet. The bank approached the agency after obtaining a forensic audit of the firm’s books.

As one of DCHL’s 24 lenders, Canara Bank has exposure amounting to Rs 400 crore with the beleaguered company. DCHL had allegedly entered into multiple banking arrangements without disclosing the extent of its indebtedness to others and used the financial information as of March 2011 to take a total debt of over Rs 4,300 crore.