AP CID Questions Lokesh on Second Day, Questions Puneeth in IRR Scam

VIJAYAWADA: Telugu Desam national general-secretary Nara Lokesh appeared before the Crime Investigation Department (CID) for the second consecutive day on Wednesday for questioning in the Amaravati Inner Ring Road alignment case.

Lokesh, who was grilled for six-and-a-half hours on Tuesday, reached the CID office at Tadepalli on Wednesday morning. The questioning continued for six hours.

The questioning began for the Accused-14 in the IRR case at 10 am and concluded at 5 pm. A CID team asked him about the change of IRR alignment, inclusion of Lokesh into the Cabinet sub-committee immediately after he was made a minister in Naidu’s government, why the IRR alignment was changed to benefit the lands of then minister Ponguru Narayana, what was Lokesh’s involvement vis-à-vis the decision to effect a huge increase in compensations for land acquisitions for the IRR project, the reason behind offering the guesthouse for free of charge by Lingamaneni Ramesh, and why the IRR alignment was benefitting lands of Heritage and Lingamaneni estates.

Lokesh gave answers to several questions and tried to avoid others by stating he had no link with them.

The AP CID also questioned Ponguru Narayana’s son-in-law Puneeth at its office. They questioned Puneeth for five hours and summoned him for questioning again on Thursday.

After the CID’s questioning, Lokesh spoke to the media. He said though the AP High Court had directed the CID to conduct an inquiry for one day, he attended the questioning for the second day as per instructions from the officials. As many as 47 questions were asked on the second day. “The same questions were asked on the first day also,” Lokesh said.

Lokesh said the officials showed the IT documents of his mother Bhuvaneswari and asked about the details, to which he replied to them to rather ask Bhuvaneswari’s auditor. He asked the CID how they got the IT returns of Bhuvaneswari, for which CID had no answer.

“Only four or five questions were asked regarding the Inner Ring Road case and the other questions were about other departments during the TD rule. About these, I do not possess any knowledge,” Lokesh said.

Lokesh said his time was wasted unnecessarily for two days in the name of questioning over the alleged Inner Ring Road scam, “while this road does not exist, it has not been laid and the land acquisition has not been done.”

Speaking about the skill development case, Lokesh said two officials, L. Premchandra Reddy and Ajeya Kallam, who did the process and signed the papers, were not investigated but Chandrababu Naidu, who framed the policy, was sent in remand.

Later Lokesh flew to Delhi to look after the matters relating to Naidu’s case in the Supreme Court.