Telangana HC slaps 6 months jail term on Karimnagar police commissioner, ACP and SHO

HYDERABAD: Justice Sanjay Kumar of the Telangana high court on Friday sentenced Karimnagar police commissioner VB Kamalasan Reddy, assistant commissioner Tirupathi and station house officer (SHO) Shashidhar Reddy of Karimnagar rural police station to six months of jail term for repeatedly raiding a resort in the town despite a restraint order from the court.
The judge imposed exemplary costs of Rs 10,000 on each of them asking them to pay it to the state legal services authority.Stating that they were found guilty in civil contempt, the judge ordered each of them to pay a penalty of Rs 2000 in addition to the jail and costs. The judge however suspended his order for four weeks to enable the officials to avail legal remedies.
The judge pronounced his order in a contempt case filed by V Jagapathi Rao of Pushpanjali Country Resort at Teegalaguttapalli near Karimnagar which charged the police with repeatedly interfering in the running of their resort. The police have been making raids to prevent people from playing cards there.
Justice Sanjay Kumar, in November 2015, gave a direction to the Karimnagar police not to interfere with the card game of Rummy (13 card game) whatever be the stakes. This was because a division bench of the high court ruled that the playing of this game need not be penalised. He directed the resort management to install video cameras and record the entire recreational activities in the resort and preserve the data at least for a period of fortnight for the police to check it. To ensure that this card game does not degrade into gambling, the CCTVs at the resort were ordered to be connected to the jurisdictional police station and also to the police commissioner’s office. If the gaming places are not connected to the CCTVs, then police can take action, Justice Sanjay said in his order. As many as 35 CCTV cameras were established in the resort and in all its card rooms, the resort’s counsel V Ravi Kiran Rao said suggesting that they complied with the court order.
When the police did not stop the raids even after this order, the resort’s acting president V Jagapathi Rao filed a contempt case in the court making police commissioner Kamalasan Reddy, ACP Tirupathi and SHO Shashidhar as respondents. The judge grew furious when the petitioner’s counsel told him that they were raided five times between November 2016 and July 2017. And, the fifth raid was conducted after the HC notice to police in the contempt case. The police were citing various reasons for their raids each time with 50 to 100 policemen. Once they said they have information that IPL betting was being done. Second time they said they received a hoax call about a bomb in the resort. Third time, they suspected a wanton disruption of CCTV connection from the resort to the police station for the alleged purpose of organising gambling.
During one of the hearings, the judge observed: “The police went with a huge platoon of policemen, some in plain clothes and arrested all those in the resort. This is a premeditated effort by the police. At one stage you say the resort did not install CCTVs. Now you are saying they are not working. None of the policemen will be let off from this case so easily. There is a limit to the police excesses”.
No evidence of IPL betting and no evidence to show that non-members were permitted into the resort. Members of the resort filed affidavits to this effect, Ravi Kiran Rao said. The police did not disprove the photographs filed by the resort which show the existence of CCTVs, he added.