Hyderabad: Questioning the necessity of filing a charge-sheet before the trial court without examining all the accused in the Miyapur land scam, the Hyderabad High Court on Monday directed the state government to inform it within four weeks whether or not it would file an additional chargesheet.
A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice G. Shyam Prasad was dealing with a PIL by BJP spokesperson and advocate M. Raghunandan Rao seeking a direction to the government to transfer the probe to the CBI.
The bench asked why all the accused were not examined by issuing notices under Section 41-A of the Criminal Procedure Code. It asked whether the trial court had issued non-bailable warrants against the accused who were shown as absconding. The bench asked whether any additional chargesheet would be filed in view of the claim that the investigation was in progress.
Mr Raghunandan Rao told the court that the Supreme Court had restrained the registration of all transactions pertaining to land in Survey No. 20, 28, 100 and 101 of Miyapur and in Hafeezpet by granting status quo in 2014. Despite the ban, several individuals, government officials and some companies had taken away 682 acres with the help of forged documents.
He said these persons and companies were planning to take away some portion of land allocated to the Metro Rail Project at Miyapur. He said there irregularities and illegalities in registration of land in Hafeezpet but the government had confined investigation its to Miyapur. He alleged that the police not arrested P. Sanjiv Prasad, alleged kingpin.
Advocate-General D. Prakash Reddy said the chargesheet had been filed against 24 accused and Prasad was not connected with the case. Prasad’s The wife and children of Prasad were shown as accused. He said that the government land parcels in Miyapur were intact. He urged the court to grant time to find out whether the trial court had issued arrest warrants against any of the accused.
