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TRS MLAs’ poaching case: Court junks SIT plea to name BJP’s Santhosh as accused
On November 22, the police filed a memo in the ACB special court at Nampally criminal courts in Hyderabad, asking for permission to include Santhosh as accused No. 4 (A-4) in the poaching case.
Hyderabad A special court for Anti-Corruption Bureau cases in Hyderabad on Tuesday rejected the plea of the Cyberabad police seeking to include Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh and three others as accused in the case of alleged attempt to poach four Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLAs into the BJP.
The Moinabad police under Cyberabad registered an FIR in the case on October 26 accusing three persons – Ramachandra Bharati from Faridabad, Nanda Kumar from Hyderabad and Simhayaji Swamy from Tirupati, who were arrested from a farmhouse while allegedly attempting to poach four TRS MLAs into the BJP by offering them huge cash, posts and contracts.
On November 22, the police filed a memo in the ACB special court at Nampally criminal courts in Hyderabad, asking for permission to include Santhosh as accused No. 4 (A-4) in the poaching case.
It also wanted three others – founder-president of Bharat Dharmika Jana Sena of Kerala, Tushar Vellapally; a doctor with Amrutha Institute of Medical Sciences at Kerala’s Ernakulam, Dr Kottilil Narayan Jaggu alias Jaggu Swamy; and senior advocate from Karimnagar B Srinivas -- as A-5, A-6 and A-7, respectively.
The police argued in the ACB court that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the Telangana government to probe the case, during its investigation, found that Santhosh and three others were in contact with the three accused named in the FIR for luring the four TRS MLAs – Pilot Rohit Reddy, Guvvala Balaraju, B Harshavardhan Reddy and Rega Kantha Rao -- into the BJP.
The ACB court agreed with the contention of the defence lawyers that there is no such procedure to include any suspect as an accused in the FIR through a memo, unless there was a specific complaint against him with proper evidence.
Therefore, the court struck down the memo and refused to name Santhosh and three other suspects as accused in the case.
On Monday, the high court extended stay till December 13 on the notices served on Santhosh by the SIT in the alleged poaching case under Section 41-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure Code. The case was posted to December 13 for further hearing.
Similar relief was granted also to Jaggu Swamy who filed a separate petition. The court ordered that the summons issued to him by the SIT be stayed till December 13.
