No mention of Santosh and three others in plea, ACB court tells SIT

HYDERABAD:  While rejecting the plea of the Special Investigation (SIT) probing the MLAs poaching case to add the names of BJP leader B.L. Santosh, Tushar Velapally, Jaggu Swamy and Karimnagar advocate Busarapu Srinivas as the accused, the ACB court pointed out that the FIR, which was submitted to the court after a delay of 19 hours from time of its issue, specifies names of only three accused - Ramachandra Bharathi, Kore Nandu Kumar and D.P.S.K.V.N. Simhayaji - does not mention ‘others’ in the accused column.

The court said Section 171B of the IPC that deals with offences related to elections, which is punishable under section 171 E of the IPC were applied against the accused. But they are not applicable in the case as no election related offence was committed as per the record.

The court said that the section 506 of the IPC (Criminal intimidation) was also slapped against the accused, but the FIR and the remand report do not reveal the contents of the charge. They don’t attract section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The court also pointed out that except for the statement of MLA Pilot Rohith Reddy, the complainant in the case, statements of other three MLAs, who were
allegedly attempted to be poached, recorded by the investigating officer, were yet to see the light of the day.

“There is no oral evidence from any of the witnesses about the involvement of the proposed accused in the offence,” the court observed.

The court also said that after verifying the transcript of the audio recordings allegedly recorded by the police in the farmhouse, it did not find any incriminating or prima facie material against the proposed accused.