The Telangana High Court on Monday handed over the alleged MLA poaching case — pertaining to the attempts to "buy" four MLAs of the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) — to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Justice B Vijaysen Reddy also ordered that the seven-member special investigation team (SIT), set up by the K Chandrashekar Rao government to investigate the case, must be dissolved and the team’s members cannot carry out any further probe. The ruling came after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the three accused in the case approached the high court and sought the transfer of the case to the CBI. The court had earlier junked the BJP petitions on technical grounds but agreed to hear the accused’s plea. What is the poaching case? On October 26, Cyberabad police raided a farmhouse in Moinabad, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, and arrested three men - Ramachandra Bharati alias Satish Sharma, K Nanda Kumar and Simhayaji Swami. According to the officials, the men were allegedly affiliated with the BJP and offered bribes to four BRS MLAs in return for switching loyalties. The police further added that the accused offered Rs 100 crore to P Rohith Reddy, BRS MLA from Tandur, and asked him to invite three other legislators, Rega Kantha Rao, B Harshvardhan Reddy and Guvvala Balaraju, to the farmhouse where they would offer them Rs 50 crore each. A criminal case was filed at Moinabad police station against the arrested men under the charges of criminal conspiracy, offering bribes for electoral gains and Section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988. One of the accused, Simhayaji Swami, was granted bail by the high court and released on December 7. The other two remain under judicial custody as the police filed other cases against them, The Indian Express reported. How did the KCR government react? On November 3, KCR hit out at the BJP and accused the party of trying to topple his government. He released a bunch of audio and video clips that purportedly showed the accused talking about their plans to “dethrone” the Telangana government. The chief minister later ordered the formation of the SIT, headed by the Hyderabad police commissioner CV Anand, to further probe the case. Subsequently, the SIT found BJP national general secretary BL Santhosh and three others — Bharat Dharma Jana Sena president Tushar Vellapally of Alappuzha, one Jaggu Kottilil of Kochi, and D Srinivas, a Karimnagar-based advocate — as “persons of interest” and summoned them for interrogation. According to The Indian Express report, the team had also sought to mention Santosh as an accused in the case but an anti-corruption court denied the permission. How did the BJP react? Ever since the allegations of poaching have come to the limelight, the BJP has denied its involvement. The party also accused KCR of being an “actor” in the “political field”. After the Tuesday ruling of the high court, senior BJP leader and advocate N Ramchander Rao, who also represented the arrested men in court, said, “We have brought to the notice of the high court that the SIT is not conducting the investigation impartially and is going only by the directions of the government. It has not taken into consideration the technical aspects of the case. The police had deliberately named the BJP, though it had nothing to do with the case.”
