The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Telangana police is gearing up for the arrest of Bharatiya Janata Party national general secretary (organisation) B L Santosh and two others in connection with the alleged attempt to poach four TRS legislators into the BJP.
The SIT on Monday issued lookout notices for Santosh, a doctor with Amrutha Institute of Medical Sciences in Ernakulam Dr Kottilil Narayan Jaggu alias Jaggu Swamy and founder-president of Bharat Dharmika Jana Sena of Kerala Tushar Vellapally, who failed to respond to the summons and did not turn up for questioning on Monday.
Only the fourth suspect – B Srinivas, a lawyer from Karimnagar and believed to be a close associate of BJP state president Bandi Sanjay, appeared before the SIT for questioning on Monday and he is likely to be questioned for the second consecutive day on Tuesday.
These four suspects were summoned as their names were retrieved from the call data records of the three accused who were arrested in the case from a farmhouse on the outskirts of Hyderabad – Ramachandra Bharati, Nanda Kumar and Simhayaji Swamy.
The lookout notice for Jaggu Swamy was pasted on several local police stations in Kerala. Stating that he is a “Wanted” in the case of the alleged poaching of TRS MLAs, the SIT said he had played a key role in the conspiracy to lure the four TRS MLAs – Pilot Rohit Reddy, Guvvala Balaraju, B Harshavardhan Reddy and Rega Kantha Rao into the BJP by offering huge sums of bribe.
The notice also gives a small brief of what the case is, a ‘case of inducement of bribe to MLAs of the TRS Party to defect and also to discharge their duties improperly and dishonesty and criminal intimidation to topple and destabilise the democratically elected State government’.
Stating that he was found to be absconding from his residence and workplace, the notice asks all police unit officers across India to communicate the LookOut Notice to police stations under their jurisdictions and furnish any clues regarding the wanted person to the Hyderabad City Control Room, ACP Rajendranagar, DCP Shamshabad Zone and the Moinabad Police Station, with contact numbers of all these entities also given.
“If Santosh and others do not respond to the notices, the SIT will take the legal opinion and approach the high court seeking permission to arrest them, as they violated the court directions to cooperate with the investigating authorities,” a police official said.