VIJAYAWADA
The government of Andhra Pradesh expressed its willingness to High Court to hand over the investigation of the theft that took place in the IV Additional Judicial First Class Magistrate (AJFCM) court at Nellore on April 13, to the CBI during the hearing on a PIL filed in pursuance to the HC taking suo motu notice of the crime.
Accordingly, a Division Bench of the High Court led by Chief Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and consisting of Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy directed the State to file an affidavit to that effect while ordering notices to be served to the respondents including Agriculture Minister Kakani Govardhan Reddy, an employee of the AJFCM court responsible for transferring files to the court for trial of criminal cases related to MPs and MLAs, and impleaded private parties. The matter has been posted for further hearing on May 6.
It may be noted that thieves broke into the IV AJFCM court in Nellore in the early hours of April 13, and subsequently the police arrested two persons who, according to SP Vijaya Rao, are habitual offenders, and recovered a tab, a laptop, four cell phones and seven SIM cards from them.
The TDP suspected that the stolen material contained evidence of the alleged involvement of Mr. Govardhan Reddy in forging some documents to corroborate his charge that Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy possessed assets disproportionate to known sources of income when he (the TDP leader) was Minister in 2017.
Mr. Chandramohan Reddy then filed a defamation case against Mr. Govardhan Reddy and it is pending in the Nellore court. After the Opposition parties raised a hue and cry, the HC took cognisance of the theft case as it snowballed into a major controversy.
