VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday reserved its order on the petition filed by former advocate general Dammalapati Srinivas challenging the case registered against him and a few others in the alleged Amaravati land scam.
Reserving the order after the arguments concluded, Justice Cheekati Manavendranath Roy asked the government to file counters in some petitions, for which counters were not filed. At the same time, he directed Dammalapati and lawyers of other petitioners to submit details of land transactions in writing. Srinivas had filed a petition in the High Court seeking stay on any action including his arrest after the State government sought a CBI inquiry into the Amaravati land scam in March last year.
However, with the ACB registering a case against him even as his petition was pending in the court, he filed a supplementary petition in the form house motion. In the petition, he sought a media gag order in the case proceedings. The then Chief Justice JK Maheshwari stayed the inquiry and investigation in the ACB case against Dammalapati and directed the ACB not to take any action against the accused till further orders. He also issued media gag orders as demanded by the former AG.
The State government moved the Supreme Court challenging the gag order last July. Later, the State government withdrew its petition and informed the Supreme Court that they would argue for vacating the stay in the case in the High Court. Allowing it, the Supreme Court directed the High Court to dispose of the case in four weeks. Senior advocate Siddhartha Luthra argued that the ACB case was filed against his client, Dammalapati, as part of political harassment.
He contended that there were ulterior motives behind filing a case against Dammalapati. Case investigation officer TVV Pratap Kumar on behalf of ACB has filed a counter, as directed by the court. He had argued that there were no ulterior motives behind the FIR against Dammalapati and it was filed only after conducting preliminary investigation.
Posani Venkateswarlu, counsel for other petitioners, argued that owners of lands had sold their lands voluntarily, which negates scope for cheating. Advocate General S Sriram on behalf of the government objected to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy being made a respondent.
‘Did official duty’
Counsel for IPS officer K Raghurami Reddy objected his client made as a respondent as an individual and argued that he had only discharged his duty as an officer and as part of it asked the IT department to
provide details of the petitioners.