HYDERABAD: A vacation bench of Telangana High Court on Thursday suspended for four weeks the order passed earlier by a single judge who had convicted the then SP, now Karimnagar Police Commissioner, VB Kamalasan Reddy and two other police officers in a contempt case and sentencing them to six months imprisonment and imposing a fine of Rs 2,000 each. The single judge also imposed costs of `10,000 each to be payable to the State Legal Services Authority. Further, the judge directed the State government to incorporate the said punishment in the service record of the contemnors.
Dealing with an appeal moved in the form of lunch motion, the bench comprising Justice A Rajasheker Reddy and Justice A Abhishek Reddy suspended the punishment order for the next four weeks to enable the contemnors -- Kamalasan Reddy, ACP Tirupathi and Karimnagar rural police station SHO Sashidhar Reddy, to explore legal remedies. This relief would be available to them till first week of November.
On September 27 this year, the single judge passed the impugned order in the contempt case filed by Pushpanjali country resort, represented by its president and former MLA V Jagapathi Rao, situated at Teegalaguttapally in Karimnagar seeking action against the police authorities concerned for deliberately violating the order passed earlier by the court. In Nov 2015, the judge while dealing with a petition by the said resort, directed the Karimnagar police not to interfere with the card game of rummy (13 card game) whatever be the stakes. When the petitioner’s counsel V Ravi Kiran Rao told the court that the police have raided the resort premises four times despite a restraint order passed earlier by the court and even arrests were made in the resort after issuance of contempt notices to the police concerned.
Taking a serious view at non-implementation of the earlier order of the court, the judge convicted the said police officers and sentenced them to six months jail. Further, the judge said that it was open to the state government to initiate disciplinary action against the said officers for foisting false cases against the petitioner. The judge suspended the order for four weeks to enable the contemnors to avail legal remedies, they moved the vacation bench for relief.