The Telangana High Court on Wednesday directed the police department to present before it three persons — M Sandeep, D Devendra and M Swapna — who were arrested from their houses for alleged links with the outlawed CPI (Maoist) party. Acting on a habeas corpus petition filed by the Chaitanya Mahila Sangham President Anitha, the court asked the cops to produce the detainees at court by 10.30 am on Friday.
The petitioner said Devendra, a lawyer and Swapna, private employee, were office-bearers of Chaitanya Mahila Sangham while M Sandeep was lawyer and Telangana Vidyarthi Vedika general secretary.
According to reports, the trio was picked up by police in plainclothes in the wee hours of Wednesday from the house of CMS general secretary Shilpa. The petitioner’s counsel V Raghunath argued that on Wednesday morning, a battery of police officers knocked on the doors of the general secretary and refused to reveal their identity to the inmates of the house. The three were later remanded to judicial custody.
“The way they were apprehended from a house in the outskirts of Hyderabad and presented before a magistrate in the early hours of day shows that procedures were not followed,” the petitioner’s lawyer V Raghunath argued.
He said the women detainee was clad in her nightdress and wasn’t even allowed to change her dress before being taken out from the house. The family members of the detainees were not allowed to meet them and all this gave scope to custodial torture, the counsel argued.
The Assistant Government Pleader (AGP) in response said since the three were under judicial remand, hence there was no need to produce them before the court. However, Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan dismissed the argument and said there was no such law and asked the three detainees to be produced in court on Friday.