Ex-CM is the only witness to request an in-camera hearing before Justice P.C. Ghose
Hyderabad: The questioning of former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao by the Justice P.C. Ghose commission of inquiry on Wednesday was a one-on-one session with Justice Ghose; the only other person present was the commission secretary.
Chandrashekar Rao, the witness No. 115 in the investigation by the commission, is the only one to have exercised the right to a private and off-bounds to media hearing, among all the witnesses who deposed before the commission.
The commission is not expected to call any more witnesses for examination. Its term is scheduled to end on July 31, the date before which it has to submit its report to the state government.
According to a commission official, Justice Ghose instructed that no one other than Chandrashekar Rao be present in the hall after the former chief minister informed that he was unwell and preferred that he be questioned in private.
Media personnel who had been covering the hearings of all the 114 witnesses till Wednesday, were asked to leave the commission’s inquiry hall, as were some irrigation department officials and staff who have been regular attendees at the hearings so far.
BRS leaders, including former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao, former minister Vemula Prashant Reddy, former Rajya Sabha MP Joginapally Santosh Kumar, were among a clutch of BRS leaders to accompany Chandrashekar Rao to the commission’s offices on the eighth floor of the BRK Bhavan near the Secretariat, waited in a room for the hearing to conclude, after which they left the building with the former chief minister.
