Telangana High Court on Thursday issued notices to Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and Prohibition and Excise Special Investigation Team Director Sarfaraz Ahmed in a contempt of court plea filed by Enforcement Directorate.
Passing a direction to this extent, a bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili instructed the two top officials to respond to the notices within 10 days. The contempt petition was filed by Enforcement Directorate stating that State government and the P&E SIT Director had not furnished the information it had sought despite a clear order from the HC.
The same bench headed by the CJ had on February 2 directed the CS and the SIT Director to furnish all the information, including the 12 FIRs, charge-sheets and the call data record of the accused in the drugs cases involving Tollywood personalities registered in 2017. The order was given by the bench disposing of a PIL petition filed by Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president A. Revanth Reddy seeking investigation by central agencies into these drug cases registered in 2017.
The bench said then that the ED can approach the HC if the required information was not furnished by the State government authorities. A month after the HC order, the ED filed the contempt plea stating that the P&E authorities did not respond to its letter to furnish information about the 2017 drugs cases despite the HC order.
This amounted to contempt of the court, the ED authorities said in the petition. The contempt plea would be heard again on April 24.
