The Telangana High Court on Thursday reserved its orders in pleas filed by Koneru Madhu and Pradeep seeking to quash the ED’s direction in the Emaar Properties scam. Senior attorney D Prakash Reddy, standing for the petitioner, said that attaching all properties in the name of ill-gotten money was invalid. According to him, attaching the Insurance Policy amount during the year 1998 is against the law. The ED claims that `96 crore in illegalities have occurred, however, attaching petitioners’ assets is against the law.
The ED has found no evidence against him, and the investigation agencies claim that two Emaar plot purchasers, Parthasarathi and Challa Suresh, put `1.05 crore and `65 lakh, respectively, in Madhu’s Dubai Bank account.
According to the investigators, this was done at the request of prime suspect Koneru Rajendra Prasad. Madhu is Prasad’s son. Senior attorney Prakash Reddy argued in the case of Madhu that the ED never said that Madhu was a member of any money-laundering plot. After hearing the petitioner’s counsel and ED, High Court reserves its orders.
HC hears Interlocutory Application on GO 111
The Telangana High Court heard an interlocutory application (IA) in which the petitioner brought the court’s attention to GO 69, which practically nullified GO 111. The High Court recorded the amendments and gave the authorities four weeks to react. A division bench of the HC, comprising Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice S Nanda, took GO 69 into consideration while hearing Dr S Jeevananda Reddy’s writ filed in 2007.
On Thursday, the petitioner’s counsel informed the court that an interim application has been filed seeking a direction to take on record the Telangana government’s GO 69, which nullifies the GO 111 restricting any developmental activities within 10 km of Himayatsagar and Osmansagar lakes. On June 15, 2022, a PIL was filed in the HC by Bala Krishna Mandapati, an educationist and advocate from Secunderabad, seeking a direction to suspend the operation of GO 69. The PIL is yet to be assigned a number.