HYDERABAD: A division bench of the High Court on Tuesday granted four weeks’ time to the Telangana government to place additional information in the form of a counter affidavit on the Miyapur land scam.The bench, comprcting chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice G Shyam Prasad, was dealing with a PIL filed by M Raghunandan Rao, advocate and BJP leader, seeking directions to the government to hand over the land scam probe to the CBI.
On an earlier occasion, Raghunandan, while appearing as party-in-person, told the court that the authorities had illegally registered 693 acres of government lands at Miyapur in favour of private persons and companies in spite of a status quo order given by the Supreme Court. The police named 24 persons and companies as accused but arrested only three persons. The main accused, P Sanjeev Prasad, was also not arrested. The police were probing the case pertaining to lands in Miyapur but not those in Hafeezpet and Hyder Nagar, he said and wanted the CBI to probe the scam as the companies involved in the fraud were located outside the state.
Pursuant to an earlier direction of the court, the AG submitted the government report on the ongoing probe.Advocate-general D Prakash Reddy said police had issued notices under Section 41A of CrPC to all the respondent companies and their directors who were accused of the scam. They responded, stating that the issue was civil in nature and did not attract sections of CrPC and IPC. If other persons’ involvement in the fraud was found during the ongoing probe, police would file an additional charge sheet.
After hearing AG’s submissions, the bench granted four weeks’ time to the government and respondent company directors to file counter affidavits. It also directed the government to furnish details of orders passed by the Land Grabbing Court and the status of the case pending before the SC.