Within hours of the ACB Special Court at Nampally ordering release of the three accused in the alleged poaching of four Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLAs on procedural grounds, the Cyberabad police on Friday moved the high court seeking the remand of the accused.
At around 10.30 pm on Thursday night, the ACB court rejected the remand petition of the Cyberabad police, seeking judicial remand for the three persons – Ramachandra Bharati alias Satish Sharma of Delhi, Nanda Kumar of Hyderabad and Simhayaji Swamy of Tirupati.
ACB court judge G Rajagopal said there was no evidence for the crime and the Prevention of Corruption Act does not apply to the case as the police failed to show any evidence about seizure of money from them.
The judge told police to issue notices to the accused under Section 41 of Criminal Procedure Code for questioning. As a result, the police released all the three unconditionally.
On Friday, however, the police followed the procedure. They issued notices to the accused asking them to appear before the police for questioning within 24 hours failing which action would be taken against them.
At the same time, the police also moved the high court saying the lower court did not follow the rules before ordering the release of the accused. The petition is expected to come up for hearing in the afternoon.
The police had registered a case against them under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 171-B (bribery) read with 171-E (punishment of bribery), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) read with 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and section 8 of Prevention of the Corruption Act.
According to the complainant, the accused offered him an amount of Rs 100 crore. They also offered to give Central government civil contract works and other high Central government positions for monetary benefits and lured him to join the BJP.
The MLA told police that they warned that if he does not join the BJP, there will be criminal cases and raids by ED/CBI. The accused offered bribes of Rs 50 crore each to three other MLAs to join the BJP.