The Cyberabad Police on Friday moved the Telangana High Court against the decision of a local court to three persons accused of having lured MLAs to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindustan Times reported.
On Thursday, the police had filed a first information report under the Prevention of Corruption Act against a Hindu seer named D Simhayaji, his disciple Ramachandra Bharati alias Satiesh Sharma and businessman Nandakumar. The police accused them of trying to lure four Telangana Rashtra Samithi to join the BJP by offering them large amounts of money.
The four MLAs – P Rohit Reddy, Bheeram Harshavardhan Reddy, P Rega Kantha Rao, Guvvala Balaraju – were seen at a farmhouse in the Aziz Nagar area of Cyberabad on October 26.
The police on Thursday presented the three accused persons before an anti-corruption bureau court and sought their judicial custody. However, the court refused to order custody, stating that there was no evidence for the alleged crime. The court also said that the Prevention of Corruption Act did not apply in the case, as the police did not show any evidence of the seizure of money from the accused persons.
The High Court directed the accused persons to remain in the city for the next 24 hours, according to the Hindustan Times. The court will hear the matter further on Saturday.
Meanwhile, two purported audio clips of conversations between Bharati and MLA P Rohit Reddy surfaced on social media. In the conversations, a man purported to be Bharati is heard urging Reddy to get more legislators to join the BJP before the Munugode bye-election, which is scheduled to be held on November 3.
The BJP, however, said that the audio clips were a part of “TRS drama”. Union minister G Kishan Reddy demanded that the Central Bureau of Investigation or a sitting Supreme Court judge should look into the case.
Scroll.in has not verified the authenticity of the audio clips.
The BJP also approached the Enforcement Directorate and Election Commission, demanding an investigation into the matter, PTI reported. It alleged that the TRS levelled the allegations to influence the Munugode bye-election.
State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar went to the Lord Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple in the Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district and took an oath that the saffron party had no role to play in the alleged poaching attempt.
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