Within hours, the Banjara Hills police in Hyderabad slapped yet another case on Ramachandra Bharathi, one of the accused in the case.
Screengrab of the video of the people allegedly involved in the "cash for MLAs" case in Telangana. (Supplied)
In what has come as a shot in the arm for the Cyberabad police, the Telangana High Court on Tuesday, 8 November, lifted the stay imposed on the investigation of the role played by three alleged BJP emissaries in trying to entice four TRS MLAs to the saffron party with an offer of ₹250 crore.
Within hours, the Banjara Hills police in Hyderabad slapped yet another case on Ramachandra Bharathi, one of the accused in the case.
At present, Bharathi and two others are lodged in the Chanchalguda jail after the ACB court sent them to judicial remand following their arrest for trying to entice four TRS legislators to join the BJP.
The new case against Bharathi is that he produced fake Aadhaar and PAN cards as well as a fake driving licence to cheat people. The police registered the case based on a complaint lodged by TRS MLA Pilot Rohit Reddy.
The case which came as it did ahead of the by-election for Munguode, had drawn statewide attention as the charges that were made against the three accused were grave.
The three emissaries are alleged to have offered ₹100 crore to Pilot Rohit Reddy and ₹50 crore each to the remaining three legislators to quit the TRS and join the BJP.
The police, on a complaint by the MLAs themselves, swooped in and arrested the three emissaries who were in confabulations with the legislators at a farmhouse in Aziznagar under Moinabad police station limits on 26 October.
The four MLAs were Rohit Reddy (Tandur), Guvvala Balaraju (Atchampet), Beeram Harshavardhan Reddy (Kollapur), and Rega Kantha Rao (Pinapaka).
The three emissaries were Ramachandra Bharathi alias Satish Sharma, a priest from Faridabad, Simha Yaji, a pontiff of Srimanantha Raja Peetham, Tirupati, and city hotelier Nanda Kumar.
After the three were arrested, the police had produced the emissaries in the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) court, which refused to send them to judicial remand.
The three accused in the Cash for MLAs case at the ACB special court. (Screengrab)
The police then police knocked on the doors of the Telangana High Court, which directed the ACB court to remand them to judicial custody while also simultaneously staying the investigation of the case on a petition filed by a local BP leader.
The high court, in its order on Tuesday, said that the Moinabad police could resume the investigation into the charges that were made against the three accused, who are now lodged in Chanchalguda prison.
The high court adjourned the next hearing in the case to 18 November.
Meanwhile, the high court adjourned the hearing on the petition filed by the BJP seeking a direction for a CBI investigation or a probe by a judge into the “arrest of BJP emissaries” to ferret out the truth.
The BJP has said it had nothing to do with those who have been arrested.
The high court, observing that the issue merited an exhaustive hearing, adjourned it to a later date.
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