HYDERABAD: Alleging that the State police have registered ‘data theft’ cases against IT Grids company director Ashok Dakavaram with a malafide intention due to bad relations between the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments, senior counsel from Supreme Court Siddharth Luthra on Wednesday urged the Telangana High Court to implead the Central government, Election Commission of India and AP govt in the case for better appreciation of the petition filed by Ashok.
Siddharth Luthra, appearing for the petitioner, was making this submission before Justice Shameem Akther dealing with two petitions filed by Ashok seeking to quash the cases registered against him and for transfer of the ongoing investigation to AP State.
He sought the court to stay all further proceedings, Ashok was the prime suspect in the case and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by Telangana government to probe the data breach case has launched a manhunt to trace him.
On earlier occasion, the judge while refusing to grant stay of all further proceedings, including his arrest, in the case for alleged stealing of the data of AP and Telangana voters and beneficiaries of various government schemes, has directed the petitioner to first respond to the notice issued by the police regarding the data dispute case.
When the matter came up for hearing on Wednesday, petitioner’s counsel Luthra contended that the Telangana police have no territorial jurisdiction to register cases against the company and its director since the alleged theft of data related to AP State and the Blue Frog company based in Visakhapatnam has given access to Aadhaar details of AP citizens. Besides, the Telangana police have registered two FIRs for the alleged crime which was in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, another senior counsel S Niranjan Reddy, appearing for T Lokeshwar Reddy who lodged complaint to the police about data theft, submitted that the IT Grids director has not disputed with the complainant informing the police that a huge data base pertaining to voters apart from AP was in possession by the company. Illegal possession of personal data of voters goes contrary to the SC guidelines, he added.
After hearing both sides, the judge directed the counsel to file an affidavit regarding his submission of impleading the Centre, ECI and AP government and posted the matter to March 27 for further hearing.