Hyderabad, Aug. 10: Andhra Pradesh High Court today ordered a full-fledged CBI probe into Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy’s alleged amassing of wealth after a preliminary investigation revealed prima facie evidence of the charges.
Jagan has been accused of having accumulated assets when his father Y.S.R. Reddy was chief minister from 2004 to 2009 and pressuring several companies to invest in his businesses in return for land allotments, mining leases and other favours from the then government.
A two-member division bench headed by Chief Justice Nisar Ahmad Kakru and Justice Vilas V. Afzulpurkar took note of two preliminary reports submitted by the CBI on petitions filed by senior state Congress minister P. Shankar Rao and Telugu Desam leader Yerran Naidu.
Another petition filed by advocate K.K. Sherwani, who is from Jagan’s Kadapa parliamentary constituency, was dismissed as it was found to be politically motivated. The bench made it clear that it had not considered any such pleas when it decided to order the investigation.
The court had in July directed the CBI to file the preliminary report into the allegations within two weeks. The reports, submitted in a sealed cover, were opened on August 4.
The CBI had questioned the heads of at least 25 of the 50-odd companies alleged to have dealt with Jagan, besides representatives of Jagan’s Jagati Publishing Company and other enterprises such as Sandur Power. Some senior IAS officials who were allegedly involved in land allocations and extending other government benefits to all those who had invested in Jagan’s companies were also quizzed.
In his affidavit before the court seeking a CBI probe, Congress minister Rao had alleged that Jagan had declared an income of only Rs 11 lakh in 2004 in his tax returns but had amassed over Rs 43,000 crore in the nearly six years of YSR’s tenure as chief minister.
J. Ravi Shankar, one of the counsels for the petitioners, said after the ruling that the bench has directed the CBI to also investigate the role of government officials involved in the misuse of power and encouraging certain companies to invest in Jagan’s firms in return for state favours. The verdict followed four days of arguments by the petitioners last week after which the court fixed today’s date for its decision.
