HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Telangana High Court on Sunday directed the State police to produce four IT Grid employees - Regonda Bhaskar, Phani Kaduluri, Gurudu Chandra Sekhar and Vikram Goud Rebbala - before the court on Monday. The bench also directed them to hand over the case diary to court.
The bench comprising Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akther passed the order following a habeas corpus petition moved in the form of house motion by D Ashok, director of IT Grid. Ashok sought an inquiry into alleged physical and mental torture of the employees. The petitioner named the State Principal Secretary, Home, DGP, SHOs of Cybercrime wing, Gachibowli, Cybercrime police station and Madhapur police station as respondents.
Petitioner’s counsel Krishna Prakash told the court that the families of the four detained employees accused six police personnel from the cyber crime wing of barging into their houses and forcibly taking them on Saturday at about 7 am in the name of investigation into a case.
If they were investigating a case, the police should have come in uniform and kept the subjects informed of the details of the crime, FIR number and so on. Instead, they treated the family members in a high-handed manner.
On the other hand, TS counsel Santosh denied the petitioner’s allegation and told the court that nobody from the IT firm were in the police custody. He, however, admitted that an FIR was registered against IT Grid. The police only issued notices to the said four persons. After perusing the case diary, the bench found fault with the police for issuing notices to the four persons under Section 160 CrPC. Even the case diary did not have full particulars, the bench pointed out and said that the police had no authority to take any citizen into custody illegally.
The bench directed Telangana police to produce the four persons before it on Monday. It also directed the family members of the four to file affidavits regarding the information passed on to the petitioner on the issue. While adjourning the case hearing to Monday, the bench directed the court registry to preserve the case diary.