HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Telangana High Court, comprising Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N Tukaramji, dismissed the writ appeals filed by the State government and others and upheld a single-bench order, which handed over the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLAs poaching case probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
On December 26, 2022, Justice B Vijaysen Reddy ordered the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the State government to “immediately surrender the case (FIR No. 455/2022) to the CBI” and revoked GO 63. The bench also turned down the request of Advocate General BS Prasad to stay its order to facilitate the State government to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.
“We have no hesitation in our mind that the order passed by the single judge was in the context of criminal subject matter and certainly in the exercise of criminal jurisdiction in the proper sense as explained by the Supreme Court in Ramakrishnan Fauji judgement,” the judges said. The court further observed that it had made a ‘careful and compound analysis of the averments made in all the writ appeals, writ petitions and the order passed by the single judge’.
The order now paves way for the CBI to proceed with the probe. The central agency has already written to Chief Secretary requesting to furnish all relevant material in the case. The bench also noted that the single judge upheld the rights of the three accused — Ramachandra Bharathi, Nandu Kumar and Simhayaji . The single judge opined that the rights of the accused were being compromised due to the leakage of investigation findings and material, branding them as culprits even before the chargesheet was filed against them.
BRS MLA TO MOVE SC
Reacting to the HC judgment, Achampet MLA Guvvala Balaraju said the ruling BRS will face the probe without fear and that he will approach the Supreme Court to contest the HC’s decision.