Investigators from the Crime Investigation Department (CID) went to P Shankar Rao’s bedside in a corporate hospital Saturday to ask whether he had indeed been badly treated by the police on Thursday, but the former minister refused to meet them. So they met his family members and doctors instead.
A day after chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy ordered a probe, headed by additional director-general of police (CID) T Krishna Prasad, into Thursday’s Shankar Rao arrest drama, at least two teams led by deputy inspector-general of police Shankha Brata Bagchi visited Shanker Rao went to the hospital but he sent word through his doctors that he was in no condition to talk.
The CID officials then interacted with Shankar Rao’s daughter Sushmitha and wife Viswasanthi and gathered details of his detention from his Musheerabad residence by the Neredmet police.
Sushmitha reported that the three inspectors in the police posse -- G Jagan (Keesara), B Pushpan Kumar and K Venkat Reddy (Alwal) - violated rules and regulations on detention of suspects and effectively trespassed into the house. “Along with Neredmet inspector P Srinivas, they behaved rashly with my father,” she reportedly told CID officials.
The teams returned after spending two and a half hours at the hospital. They collected some medical documents on Shanker Rao’s health.
Minutes after the CID teams left, Sushmitha told the media she has no faith in the CID probe and demanded a CBI investigation. “The facts will come out only if the CBI takes up the case,’’ she said.
In a related development, some of the plot owners in the Green Field housing project, who had levelled allegations against Shankar Rao, staged a dharna in front of the Neredmet police station demanding the former minister’s immediate arrest. They alleged that he created fake and forged documents claiming ownership of more than 70 acres of land on which the housing scheme is coming up. They also requested the police to speed up the investigation into the scam.