Thieves broke into a court in Nellore in Andhra Pradesh and stole documents including those related to a high-profile case allegedly involving a minister. The theft took place in the Fourth Additional Judicial Magistrate Court in Nellore on Wednesday, April 13. The offenders also took away a few electronic items. The court staff found out about the theft after coming to the premises on the morning of Thursday, April 14. Based on the complaint, police filed a case and took up the investigation.
Police found a bag with some of the stolen items in a culvert outside the court but several documents were missing. According to the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the stolen documents belong to a forgery case filed by its senior leader Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy against YSRCP leader Kakani Govardhan Reddy, who became a minister earlier this week.
In December 2017, Sarvepalli MLA Kakani Govardhan Reddy alleged that former minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy had properties worth thousands of crores of rupees in foreign countries. He released a few documents, quoting them as property documents, to the media. Subsequently, Somireddy had filed a complaint at Nellore Rural police station that Kakani had forged the documents, and demanded action to be taken against him.
Somireddy even filed a defamation case against Kakani in court. Later, it was proved that the documents provided by Kakani were fake and a charge sheet was filed against him, TDP said. Meanwhile, TDP leader and Public Accounts Committee chairman Payyavula Keshav on Friday demanded a suo motu investigation into the theft.
Keshav said Kakani was the prime accused in the forgery case. The TDP leader said anybody could guess who would benefit from the theft of the documents shown as evidence in the charge sheet filed against Kakani Govardhan Reddy. The judiciary should take a very serious view of this theft from the 4th Additional Judicial Magistrate Court in Nellore, Keshav said.
Keshav asserted that this was the “first time in the country” that documents were stolen from the court in a brazen manner. If the perpetrators of this theft were not punished, it would set a wrong precedent for offenders and criminals all over the country, he said.