Hyderabad: Bhargav and Sudershan, associates of former minister and senior Congress leader Duddilla Sridhar Babu, were arrested by the Chikkadpally police on Monday. The duo and the former minister were booked under Section 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985 for abetment and criminal conspiracy. The police said that they were in the process of collecting evidence to prove that Mr Sridhar Babu had a role to play. His associates were produced before a court and sent to judicial remand.
A complaint was filed by TRS leader Kishan Reddy of Muttaram in Peddapally district alle-ging that Sudershan had planned to plant marijuana in his house and that he had sought help from Bhargav and Mr Sridhar for implementation of his plans. Mr Kishan Reddy submitted recordings of telephone conversations in which Suder-shan is purportedly heard asking Mr Sridhar Babu to help him implicate the TRS in a false narcotics case. The ex-minister is heard assuring Suder-shan that he will tip the police off once the drugs are planted in Mr Kishan Reddy’s house so that they may arrest him for being in possession of a contraband substance. The TRS leader was somehow able to get hold of the recordings of the conversation and filed a complaint with the with Chikkadpally police.
TRS on a witch-hunt against Congress: TPCC president
TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and working president Mallu Bhatti Vikra-marka on Monday came out in support of former Congress minister Duddilla Sridhar Babu. They said that the TRS government was on a witch-hunt, trying to pin petty charges on Congress leaders. Speaking at Gandhi Bhavan, the leaders said that Mr Sridhar Babu, and other leaders of the Congress, would not surrender and would continue to take up agitations aga-inst the government. They said that Mr Sri-dhar Babu had been fighting against rampant corruption in the administration of the Kaleswaram Lift Irri-gation Scheme, and so the government was tr-ying to implicate him in petty cases out of fe-ar of exposure. They said that the TRS had made it a policy to ha-rass leaders of Oppo-sition parties and thr-eaten them with cases.
Mr Vikramarka said that if audio recordings of the conversation could alone be considered prima facie evidence, then several TRS leaders could be charged with direc-tly threatening contractors and involvement in Nayeemuddin cases, yet not a single case had been registered against them.
