Hyderabad: Justice Tadakamalla Vinod Kumar of the Telangana High Court pointed out the alleged fraud played by the Karimnagar- ll town station house officer Lakshmi Babu to mislead the court and escape allegations of abuse of police powers. The Judge directed the officer to appear before the court on April 21 and on all days until the final orders are passed.
Justice Kumar was dealing with a contempt petition filed by Nuguri Vamshikrishna against Lakshmi Babu’s abuse of powers by raiding the former’s house and taking away property documents. Further, the allegations against the said officer are that he had illegally taken a day’s custody of Vamshikrishna from 11 am on August 10, 2022 and threatened to burn the documents, if Vamshikrishna did not follow his directions.
When the aggrieved person approached the High Court, the police were ordered to furnish the CCTV footage of the said day of illegal custody. The officer filed a counter-affidavit on oath, submitting that the CCTV cameras were at the police station in November 2022.
On other hand, Sanjeev Kalvala, counsel for the petitioner opposed the SHO's affidavit and said that the police station was designated as a model police station with CCTV video recording capability in 2018. He showed the Independence Day celebrations in which the CCTV cameras were clearly seen.
Meanwhile, Justice Kumar directed the DGP to update the court about the status of installation of CCTV cameras in all police stallions in the state in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court in the Paramvir Singh Saini v. Baljit Singh case whereby it directed all states to have CCTV cameras with recording facility of 18 months by March 29.
