VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Tuesday directed TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh to appear before the Crime Investigation Department (CID ) for questioning on October 10 in connection with the Amaravati Inner Ring Road (IRR) case.
The court pronounced the order while dealing with a lunch motion petition filed by Lokesh, opposing a notice issued to him by the APCID under Section 41 (A) of the CrPc asking him to appear for questioning on October 4. Justice K Srinivas Reddy directed the investigating agency not to insist on Lokesh to bring bank documents and to allow an advocate to accompany the petitioner during the probe.
The APCID officials had served notice on the TDP general secretary at the residence of TDP MP Galla Jayadev in New Delhi on September 30. He was asked to appear before the probe agency at its Economic Offences Wing-II office in Tadepalli on October 4 at 10 am.
Lokesh was told to bring bank account details of Heritage Foods Limited, minutes of the board meetings and payments related to land transactions along with him.Senior advocate Posani Venkateswarlu, who appeared for Lokesh, argued that the petitioner was only a shareholder in Heritage Foods and served as director on the board of the company before 2017.
He further contended that CID summoning him to appear for questioning with certain documents was illegal. “Bringing documents at the time of questioning is not possible,” Venkateswarlu informed the court, while expressing concern that CID might arrest Lokesh on the pretext that he had failed to bring the said documents. He urged the court to direct the CID to postpone questioning of Lokesh.
Appearing for APCID, additional public prosecutor Dushyanth Reddy stated the CID would not exert pressure on Lokesh to furnish the documents. Reddy urged the court not to postpone the probe date and said that APCID would be questioning Lokesh along with other accused in the case.
On hearing the arguments, Justice Srinivas Reddy directed Lokesh, who is accused number 14 in the case, to appear before APCID on October 10. He directed the state probe agency to conduct the questioning between 10 am and 5 pm.