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HC shifting poaching case to CBI puts BRS on defensive
Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who launched an offensive by engineering a sting operation by police on the alleged bid to poach his party MLAs by three persons, believed to be closer to the BJP top leadership, has created in a tricky situation with the high court handing over the case to the CBI
Hyderabad
The Telangana high court’s judgement on Monday transferring the case of alleged attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to poach four Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLAs from Special Investigation Team of the state police to the Central Bureau of Investigation has pushed the ruling party in the state on the defensive, people familiar with the matter said.
BRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who launched an offensive by engineering a sting operation by his state police on the alleged attempt to poach his party MLAs by three persons, believed to be closer to the BJP top leadership, has created in a tricky situation with the high court handing over the case to the CBI.
More than the sting operation to expose the alleged poaching attempt and constituting a SIT to conduct the probe, what landed KCR in trouble is the press conference he had held on November 3 to disclose video and audio clippings of the sting operation and the documentary evidence to the reporters.
The chief minister openly announced that he had sent all the material evidence and documents that run into nearly 100,000 pages to Chief Justice of India (CJI), all the judges of Supreme Court and state high court, central investigation agencies including CBI, Enforcement Directorate and Central Vigilance Commission and chief ministers of various non-BJP ruled states.
Apparently, the BRS chief thought he was exposing the alleged nefarious designs of the BJP top leadership to topple the democratically-elected governments of non-BJP ruled states. “This evidence will shake the BJP government at the Centre and will turn out to be its nemesis,” he claimed then.
But KCR’s strategy has now appears to have backfired on him. “In his eagerness to score a political point over the BJP and expose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chief minister has forgotten the fact he has taken over the role of judiciary by disclosing the audio and video clippings, which are part of the material evidences for investigation. It is a court property till the trial is completed and the chief minister cannot use the same,” political analyst and author Sriram Karri said.
That is what the high court judge also said in his judgement, while handing over the case to the CBI. In the judgement, which was reviewed by HT, Justice B Vijaysen Reddy wondered how the evidence which is part of crucial investigation by the police could go into the hands of the chief minister.
“This has caused serious prejudice to the accused, who are branded publicly as conspirators, thereby, depriving their rights to effectively defend the criminal proceedings and availing their legal remedies under law,” the judge said.
Stating that every accused is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty, the high court judge said the counsel for the police or the state government had not offered any plausible explanation as to how the video CDs and pen drives which have been seized by the police after due inquest on October 27 have been handed over to the chief minister.
“Who has handed over the same, when and how, remains a mystery. Having found serious lapses and leakage of investigation material/CDs, it is difficult to accept the contention of the government,” the judge said.
He felt that it is difficult to believe that the constitution of SIT, which acts under the government, will not alter the situation, more particularly, when the chief minister himself has openly circulated the videos and branded the accused and members of the organised crime as conspirators.
“Now that the case has been entrusted to the CBI, it will naturally hold the right to question the chief minister as to how he got access to the evidence which is part of the investigation,” Karri said.
KCR did not stop with releasing the audio and video clippings, besides documentary evidences to the reporters. He even directly dragged the names of top BJP leaders, particularly the party’s organising secretary B L Santosh, into the alleged poaching scam.
On November 16, the SIT issued summons to Santosh and three others seeking to question them for their role in the poaching of BRS MLAs and even tried to include their names as accused in the FIR by filing a memo in the Anti-Corruption Bureau court on November 22.
While the ACB court on December 5 struck down the memo, Santosh, managed to get a stay on the summons by the SIT for questioning him till December 30. And on December 26, the high court dissolved the SIT altogether.
Santosh, who was in Hyderabad on Thursday for attending a BJP training camp, said those who made allegations against him would have to face the consequences. “Hitherto, I was not a familiar name in Telangana. But now, KCR made me popular. He has to pay penalty for the same,” he added.
BRS working president K T Rama Rao said the way BJP leaders were jubilant over the high court judgement transferring the poaching case to the CBI clearly showed that the central investigation agencies were compromised in the ruling of the BJP at the Centre.
“When the accused were caught openly, the BJP said it had no connection with them and now when the case is transferred to the CBI, it is celebrating it. Is it because the case is now with your puppet agency?” he asked.
