HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court on Wednesday directed state excise department officials and the trial court hearing the 2017 drugs case to furnish copies of FIRs, chargesheets, documents, digital evidence to enforcement directorate within 15 days from now.
The call data of the accused procured by the authorities too should be given to the ED, said the bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili while disposing a PIL filed by Congress MP A Revanth Reddy. The latter has been seeking a probe by a national agency into the drugs case.
The ED has filed an interim application in the case seeking directions to the state and the trial court to furnish it with the digital evidence and other documents. “Our attempts to secure them were thwarted one way or the other,” said Abhishek Goel, the joint director of ED, who logged into the court virtually.
State counsel A Sanjeev Kumarrefuted this and said they have already given the material sought by the ED. However, he said he has no record to prove his claim.
The Bench said international drug trafficking needs to be probed by an agency like ED and it is not fair to stall it. As the state excise has already filed chargesheets in all 12 cases registered by the excise police, the need for a CBI probe may not be there now, the Bench said. It added however there was no point why ED should be stopped. It would ascertain whether a money-laundering probe is essential in this, the bench said.
