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Telangana HC lifts stay on police probe in TRS MLAs’ ‘poaching’ case
The court had earlier deferred police investigation into the matter, after the BJP filed a petition in the high court demanding a probe by a “neutral” agency, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation or a special investigation team.
The Telangana high court on Tuesday lifted the stay on the investigation by the Cyberabad police into the alleged attempt by three people to poach four Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) lawmakers into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by offering them huge cash, posts and contracts.
The court had earlier deferred police investigation into the matter, after the BJP filed a petition in the high court demanding a probe by a “neutral” agency, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation or a special investigation team. The three accused in the case were remanded in judicial custody last month.
The development comes a week after Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao called a press conference and screened a series of videos that he said backed his party’s MLA poaching charges against the BJP. The BJP had then hit back, calling the entire episode “stage-managed”.
Hearing the case filed by state BJP’s general secretary G Premender Reddy on Tuesday, a single-judge bench of the high court headed by Justice B Vijay Sen Reddy issued notice to the TRS government to respond to the BJP’s concerns over the need for an impartial investigation on November 18.
Justice Reddy, who had earlier granted a stay on the investigation by the Cyberabad police and asked the police not to take any further steps in the case till the petition was disposed of, said the court was not inclined to continue the interim orders suspending the investigation.
While lifting the stay, Justice Reddy issued notices to the state government and the police, asking them to file their counter affidavits by November 18 and directed them to update the progress of the investigation. The judge also kept the petition of the BJP general secretary pending and granted him the liberty to bring their grievance, if any, to the court.
On October 27, the Cyberabad police filed a criminal case against three persons, a day after detaining them at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Hyderabad for allegedly trying to poach four Telangana Rashtra Samithi lawmakers into the BJP.
On a complaint lodged by TRS MLA Pilot Rohit Reddy, one of the four MLAs allegedly lured with huge cash, the police registered a First Information Report (FIR) at Moinabad police station under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 171-B r/w 171-E 506 r/w 34 (offering bribe for electoral gains) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 8 of Prevention of Corruption Act-1988.
The three accused – Nanda Kumar, owner of Deccan Pride Hotel in Hyderabad, Swami Ramachandra Bharati alias S Satish Sharma from Faridabad near Delhi and Simha Yajulu from Tirupati, were later produced in the local court for Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) cases.
The ACB court, initially, dismissed the remand of the three accused stating that they were not served notices in advance under Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Code before being taken into custody. However, on October 29, the same court sent them to judicial remand for 14 days, hours after the intervention of the state high court which accepted the remand report of the police. The accused have since been lodged in the Chanchalguda central prison.
On November 3, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao alleged that the BJP leadership was trying to topple democratically-elected governments in four opposition-ruled states.
KCR, as the chief minister is called, released video files and other documents, purportedly showing the three accused, claiming to be closer to top BJP leadership, talking to the four TRS MLAs and inducing them with various benefits if they joined the BJP.
HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos in which the accused took the names of top BJP leaders as part of poaching the four TRS MLAs.
