The Telangana High Court on Friday convicted the Karimnagar Police Commissioner of Police VB Kamalasan Reddy and two other police officials in a case of contempt of court and sentenced the three officials to six-months imprisonment.
The court gave the sentence as the officials violated a 2015 restraining order against raiding a resort. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 on each official and levied an imposed exemplary costs of Rs 10,000 for civil contempt.
Apart from Karimnagar police commissioner VB Kamalasan Reddy, the Assistant Commissioner, Tirupati, and SHO Shashidhar Reddy of Karimnagar rural police station have also received a six-months sentence.
The court was hearing a contempt petition filed by V Jagapathi Rao of Pushpanjali Country Resort at Teegalaguttapalli near Karimnagar, reported TOI. The resort management had accused the police of conducting raids on card games being organised at the resort, despite a court order stopping the police from raiding the premises.
Justice Sanjay Kumar, who pronounced the sentence, granted four weeks to the officials to appeal on the matter.
The same judge had in 2015 ordered the Karimnagar police not to interfere with rummy card games being organised at the resort. The division bench had then ordered the police not to penalise those found playing the game. The court had instead directed the resort to install CCTV cameras to record all the recreational activities at the resort. The police were allowed to access the CCTV footage stored at the resort within a fortnight after which it would be erased. The CCTVs at the resort were also to be connected to the police station and the police commissioner’s office.
The court had then observed that the police can take action only if the gaming places at the report were not connected to the CCTVs. The resort claims to have installed 33 cameras to comply with the court order, said the resort’s counsel V Ravi Kiran Rao. However, the raids never stopped.“The resort was raided five times between November 2016 and July 2017 and the fifth raid was after the HC notice to police in the contempt case,” said the counsel to the court.
The judge hearing the case observed: “The police went with a huge platoon of policemen, some in plain clothes and arrested all those in the resort. This is a premeditated action by police. At one stage, you say the resort did not install CCTVs. Now, you are saying they are not working. None of the policemen will be let off from this case so easily. There is a limit to the police excesses.”