HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court on Friday dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by senior IAS officer Y Srilakshmi, who had sought relief in the high-profile Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) illegal mining case. The ruling follows a direction from the Supreme Court, which had asked the court to revisit the matter, stating that its earlier order failed to fully consider the arguments presented by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Srilakshmi, a 1988-batch IAS officer from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, was named as an accused in the multi-crore OMC scam. The CBI alleged serious irregularities and abuse of power in the grant of mining leases to OMC, whose promoters include former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy.
Earlier, Srilakshmi had approached the High Court after a CBI special court rejected her discharge petition. The court had initially ruled in her favour, but the CBI challenged the order in the Supreme Court, which upheld the agency’s stand and directed a re-examination.
Senior counsel K Vivek Reddy, representing Srilakshmi, argued that the allegations lacked merit. He said the key charge, omission of the word “captive” from a government order, occurred before Srilakshmi took charge as secretary on May 17, 2006. He further contended that Srilakshmi was not named in the original FIR or the first charge sheet filed by the CBI, but was added only in a supplementary charge sheet, which, he claimed, undermined the prosecution’s case.
On the other hand, CBI Special Counsel Srinivas Kapatia argued that Srilakshmi, in collusion with then Mines Director VD Rajagopal, had facilitated undue favours to OMC and demanded heavy bribes from other mining licence applicants.
The CBI alleged that Srilakshmi misused her position by granting lease approvals for 8.5 and 30.5 hectares of land to OMC on a single day, while turning down over 30 other applications without due process, including denial of the mandatory 15-day response time.
According to the CBI, such decisions enabled OMC to carry out illegal mining operations beyond approved limits, generating enormous profits from unauthorised mineral extraction. After hearing detailed arguments and reserving the verdict last week, the High Court on Friday ruled in favour of the CBI and dismissed Srilakshmi’s revision petition.
On May 6, the special CBI court here convicted former Karnataka Minister Gali Janardhan Reddy and three others in the case, sentencing them to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment. However, on June 11, the High Court suspended Reddy’s conviction and sentence, and granted him bail. It also approved the bail pleas of the three others convicted alongside him.