Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Friday sentenced Karimnagar police commissioner B. Kamalasan Reddy, assistant commissioner of police Tirupathi and station house officer Shashidhar Reddy to six months imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2,000 each, and imposed exemplary costs of Rs 10,000 against each of them for repeatedly raiding a resort in Karimnagar and arresting all those playing the card game of rummy, despite a restraining order from the court.
Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar, was hearing a contempt of court case filed by former legislator V. Jagapathi Rao, president of Pushpanjali Country Resorts, and punished the police officers for violating the court order issued in 2015 that had restrained them from interfering in rummy games played at the resort, whatever the stakes.
The police had raided the resort four times after the judgment and even arrested the players. This was too much for the petitioner who filed the contempt case in 2017.
At the last hearing, Mr V. Ravi Kiran Rao, counsel for the petitioner, had submitted that even after his client had filed the contempt petition, the police went in force, some in plain clothes, and arrested all those staying in the resort and kept them in jail for two days. The court was not convinced by the policemen’s explanations of the circumstances that made their action imperative.
Noticing that the police had violated the court’s order, the judge delivered the judgment directing all the three officers to undergo six months imprisonment, details of the punishment to be recorded in the service registers of the contemnors and pay a fine of Rs 2,000 each. Contemnors were also to pay exemplary costs to the tune of Rs 10,000 each to the Telangana Legal Service Authority. The court directed the state government to take disciplinary action against the officers.
However, the judge stayed the order for four weeks to enable the contemnors to avail legal remedies.
