Vijayawada: The AP CID on Tuesday questioned TD national general-secretary Nara Lokesh for six hours about his alleged involvement in the Amaravati Inner Ring Road alignment scam.
Soon after he returned from Delhi, Lokesh appeared for questioning, as the CID had already issued him summons. It is said the department asked him 50 questions. At the end of the interrogation, the AP CID officials again issued him a notice for questioning, saying he (Lokesh) is not cooperating with the investigation.
The CID sources said Lokesh remained silent for many of the questions. He responded to several questions with “don’t know”. For quite many questions, he went and consulted his lawyers before responding. However, Lokesh’s responses did not satisfy the CID officials.
When officials questioned Lokesh about decisions taken in the board meeting of Heritage Foods, he replied saying he does not know about them. When CID asked why Heritage had bought lands in Amaravati area, he reportedly gave answers that were irrelevant. Sources said the former chief minister’s son showed a tendency of skipping important issues. They would thus have to interrogate him once again.
The main charge against Nara Lokesh is that he changed the alignment of the inner ring road (IIR) in a manner that benefits Heritage. The AP CID has included in the FIR Chandrababu Naidu as accused number one, former minister Narayana as A-2, Heritage Foods as A6 and Nara Lokesh as A-14.
Giving details of his questioning to reporters, Lokesh maintained that he had answered all questions. “Out of the 50 questions, only one was about the inner ring road, all others were about Heritage,” he stated.
The TD national general-secretary said the CID could have as well Googled for the answers.
In the interim, the CID has filed a petition in the ACB court regarding the change in the investigating officer of the IRR case. DSP Vijaya Bhaskar has been assigned the responsibility of the case in place of ASP Jayarama Raju. The CID’s petition in this regard to the court said the investigation officer has been changed due to the heavy workload of Jayarama Raju.
