Church leaders in Karnataka welcomed the arrest yesterday of two mining magnates on fraud and corruption charges and for illegal mining in the southern Indian state. Gali Janardhana Reddy and his brother-in-law Srinivas Reddy have long been accused of operating a multi-million dollar iron ore extraction empire in Karnataka and in neighboring states. They are the first high-profile arrests since anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare staged his recent protest in Delhi. Authorities also seized 45 million rupees (nearly US$1 million) and 30 kg of gold in raids on their homes. A special court in Hyderabad, capital of neighboring Andhra Pradesh state, later remanded them in police custody for 14-days. Gali Janardhana Reddy was Karnataka’s tourism minister until he was forced to quit a month ago as a result of the fallout from a Supreme Court ban on illegal mining in the state’s Bellary district in April. Srinivas Reddy, is managing director of the Obulapuram Mining Company in which Gali Janardhana Reddy is a majority shareholder. “People in Bellary live at the mercy of a parallel government comprising of mining barons” who ride roughshod over people who can’t fight back, said Father Faustine Lobo, spokesperson of the Karnataka Catholic Bishops’ Council. The priest said today that the Church condemns illegal mining and wants the guilty punished as an example. Fr Lobo alleged the Reddy brothers and their associates had flouted laws and manipulated records to get a mining license valid until 2006 extended until 2017. The Reddys are prominent leaders of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party that has ruled Karnataka since May 2008. The Church said some its land is currently at the center of a legal dispute between the Church and another mining company believed to be owned by the Reddys. Ranka International Private Limited began mining on Church land in January 2010. A campaign later forced the government to halt the mining. “Now the dispute is in the state tribunal,” said Fr Antony Raj, who administers diocesan funds. According to him the mining firm has already extracted at least 100,000 tons of iron ore from the Church land illegally. Fr Raj said the Good Shepherd nuns leased some land to several mining firms some years ago, but it was taken after the “mining barons forged ownership documents” to claim the land.