The AP High Court on Friday permitted the Anti-Corruption Bureau to probe three senior state bureaucrats as also Raheja Corporation and its representatives for allegedly taking decisions against the interests of the AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation and in favour of Raheja Corporation.
The ACB has filed a case against IAS officers B.P. Acharya, K. Ratna Prabha and IPS officer M. Gopikri-shna, as well as Neel Raheja and B. Ravindranath of Raheja Corporation, and P.S. Murthy, joint secretary in the IT department.
They have been accused of favouring the IT project, Raheja Mindspace, in the city, a joint venture between the APIIC and Raheja Corp.
State lost Rs 500 cr in Raheja deal
Advocate T. Sriranga Rao had moved the ACB court complaining that as per the MoU entered into between the APIIC and Raheja Corporation in the year 2005, the two entities shall hold equity of 11 per cent and 89 per cent respectively.
Later, the officials na-med allegedly colluded with the Rahejas to decr-ease the equity of APIIC from 11 per cent to 0.55 per cent. Due to this, the state suffered a loss of `500 crore while the Rah-ejas gained Rs 500 crore.
The ACB court directed the ACB to probe the matter. Aggrieved by this, the bureaucrats and the Raheja representatives moved the HC.
Justice Raja Elango on Friday dismissed their petitions, holding that “the court is of the considered view that the impugned order does not warrant interference of the HC and that the revision petitions are liable for dismissal”.
The judge said that “in cases instituted for an offence punishable und-er the provisions of PCA, the court has no power to take cognisance without there being any previous sanction and certainly the same may have necessitated the special judge to order a preliminary investigation into the issue”.
He made it clear that at this stage he was not going into the merits of the complaints as it amo-unts to invoking the provision under Section 482 of CrPC.