As his arrest in the Amaravati Inner Ring Road (IRR) alignment case looks imminent, TDP national general secretary N. Lokesh filed an anticipatory bail petition in the Andhra Pradesh High Court on September 27.
The CID had added Mr. Lokesh as A-14 in the case and filed a memo to that effect in the ACB Special Court on September 26.
The accused were charged with obtaining wrongful pecuniary gains allegedly through manipulation of the IRR alignment by abusing their official position in connivance with some of the co-accused.
Mr. Lokesh was said to be one of the beneficiaries. A complaint to that effect had been lodged with the CID by YSR Congress Party Mangalagiri legislator Alla Ramakrishna Reddy in April 2022.
In his bail plea, Mr. Lokesh said he was never involved as Minister for IT and Panchayat Raj & Rural Development, or in any other capacity, with the IRR project, and, therefore, the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) were not applicable to him.
The invocation of the relevant provisions in the memo was done by the CID with the sole objective of bypassing the bar against vexatious arrests created by the Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar V/s State of Bihar, he said.
The primary ground for seeking arrest in the matter was “to ascertain the larger conspiracy of causing wrongful pecuniary gains.” Arresting someone on such vague and sweeping grounds was illegal, he said.
Moreover, since not even an inch of land was acquired for the IRR, which had been abandoned in the wake of scrapping of the Amaravati Master Plan itself by the present government in the year 2020, the question of reaping windfall benefits to the detriment of others did not arise, Mr. Lokesh insisted.
