The Special Investigation Team that is probing the TRS MLA poaching case faced a setback on Tuesday, December 6, with the ACB special court rejecting a memo filed by the investigation team to array BJP National General Secretary BL Santosh and three others as accused. The judge G Raja Gopal stated that neither the law and order police nor the SIT is competent to investigate offences related to the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act and that the Special Police Establishment (Anti Corruption Bureau) is the competent authority to do so.
The SIT is likely to appeal against the order in the Telangana High Court. It was in the third week of November that the SIT filed a memo before the ACB Special Court appealing for permission to array BL Santosh (A4), Tushar Vellapally (A5), Dr Jaggu Kottilil (A6) and advocate B Srinivas (A7) as accused in the case along with the three main accused-- Ramachandra Bharathi (A1), K Nanda Kumar (A2) and Simhayaji (A3).
The court also noted that the three accused in their confession statements did not reveal the role of the proposed accused in the crime. “On a careful consideration of confessional statements of A1 to A3, it is found that they did not reveal any kind of role of proposed accused A4 to A7 to commit the alleged offences. It is the duty of the Investigating Officer to place convincing and prima facie evidence against the proposed accused so as to array them as accused in the above crime,” the court said.
The court also noted that entire material collected, including the FIR, remand report and the confessional statements did not reveal any prima facie case against the proposed accused. "Hence the court has no hesitation to hold that no prima facie case is made out for any of the offences against the proposed accused so as to array them as accused in the crime,” the court stated.
The Telangana High Court on Monday stayed a notice issued under section 41A of CrPC by the SIT to BJP national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh till December 13. The court had on November 25 stayed the notice till December 5. Justice K Surender extended the stay till December 13.
SIT had earlier issued notices to Santhosh and others to appear before it for questioning on November 21. But, they did not. So, based on the court direction, the SIT again issued notice to Santhosh to appear before it either on November 26 or 28.
With PTI inputs