Government officials caught for corruption play Telangana card to avoid probe

Hyderabad: Corrupt bureaucrats who were arrested in trap and disproportionate assets cases by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) before the state was bifurcated, are now playing the Telangana card to escape prosecution.

Several employees who were booked for corruption are now lobbying to make a representation with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao that they were targeted as they belonged to Telangana and took up agitations for a separate state.

They are demanding that the cases against them be either lifted, or the quantum of punishment be reduced so that no prosecution is launched and departmental action can be initiated. Around 500 of them are making representations through employee leaders to the Telangana government. They are visiting the Telangana Secretariat to put pressure on the government.

They even went to the extent of claiming that AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is lifting corruption cases against AP employees. An employee of Forensic Science Laboratory who was accused in a corruption case said, “I was active in Telangana movement and headed the associations. That is when they trapped me.”

The police denied booking cases based on region or political affiliations.

A senior ACB official of Telangana said, “Our cases are not politically motivated. They are based on information. Courts have to decide whether an employee involved in a case is corrupt or not. We recommended prosecution of many employees involved in the trap and disproportion assets cases.”