ACB judge rejects remand of accused in TRS MLAs poaching case

HYDERABAD: The case pertaining to the alleged attempt to poach four TRS MLAs received an unexpected turn after the remand of the three accused was rejected by the judge of an ACB court here on Thursday night.

The three accused, Ramachandra Bharti alias Satish Sharma, Simhayaji and Nanda Kumar alias Nandu, were arrested by the Cyberabad police on Wednesday night and a case was registered under section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120B for criminal breach of trust.

The ACB court judge reportedly rejected the remand citing lack of sufficient evidence. He also reportedly maintained that Section 8 of the PC Act invoked was not applicable in the case. The judge was also learnt to have rejected the remand of the accused as the bribe amount could not be produced for evidence.

The court directed the Cyberabad police to serve a notice to the accused under Section 41 CrPC and question them.

The BJP came under the cloud following an alleged attempt to poach four of the TRS MLAs into the saffron party with heavy enticements of money and contracts in exchange for it. The Cyberabad Police raided a farmhouse in Moinabad on Wednesday night and arrested the three accused. They were detained for allegedly trying to broker a deal running into hundreds of crores of rupees with TRS MLAs Guvvala Balaraju (Acchampet), Rega Kantha Rao (Pinapaka), Harshavardhan Reddy (Kollapur) and Pilot Rohit Reddy (Tandur).

Besides allegedly offering hefty sums of money, they were even accused of throwing the bait of contracts and plum Central government posts to lure them into resigning from the TRS and join the BJP fold.

The Telangana BJP, which has been vehemently denying accusations of its involvement in the sensational bribing scandal, approached the Telangana High Court on Thursday challenging the action initiated by the Cyberabad Police into the case. In a writ petition, BJP leader Gujjula Premender Reddy sought directions from the high court for the transfer of the case from the Cyberabad Police to the CBI. He also appealed to the court to order the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to thoroughly probe the scandal.