The ACB special court in Vijayawada on Thursday granted permission to the Andhra Pradesh CID to issue a Prisoner in Transit (PT) warrant for former Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu in the APSFL scam case, known as the fibernet case.
This, despite his counsel’s request for postponement of orders for one day in view of the Supreme Court hearing on Friday.
The court, after hearing arguments, ordered that the TDP chief be physically produced before it between 10 am and 5 pm on Monday.
The case
The charge against Naidu is that he resorted to financial irregularities in the implementation of the Fibernet project when he was the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Under this project, works valued at Rs.333 crore were taken up in the first phase, of which misappropriation of Rs.115 crore had taken place.
The total value of the project was ₹2,000 crore.
The CID said that Terasoft, promoted by Vemuri Harikrishna — who is close to Chandrababu Naidu — and the TDP chief’s son Lokesh was given the work order.
The CID accused Naidu of bending all rules in awarding the contract to Terasoft.
The prosecution argued that Naidu’s name was included in the case after his role in the scam was established in the investigation done by the police.
It reminded the court that the Enforcement Directorate had suspected that money laundering took place in the scam.
The prosecution explained how the scam took place in the implementation of the project.
Other arguments
Later on, arguments took place on call data records petition.Senior Advocate Dammalapati Rama Rao, representing Naidu, tried to fix the CID stating though they had taken his petitioner into custody at 11 pm on 8 September at Nandyal, it was shown as having happened at 6 am on 9 September.
Therefore, he argued, the call data of the investigating officer (IO) and other officers who were present at the time of the arrest at Nandayal should be preserved.
CID counsel also argued that if the call data petition was allowed, it would hurt the morale and privacy of the officers.The officers needed immunity, he said.
