Jagan's attack case: HC may take petitions on Tuesday

Holding the view that the contentions are similar in the PIL and writ petitions filed in connection with the attack on YSR Congress president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy at Visakhapatnam airport on Oct 25, Justice AV Sesha Sai of the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the registry to tag the two. The two petitions are expected to come up for hearing before a division bench headed by Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan on Tuesday.

Jagan moved the High Court on Wednesday with a plea that the investigation into the attack on him be entrusted to any appropriate independent agency not under the control of the Andhra Pradesh government. Earlier, YSR Congress party, represented by its political affairs committee member and former MP YV Subba Reddy, filed a petition seeking direction to the State government to forthwith handover the investigation to any independent investigating agency to probe the attack case.

Prior to these two petitions, B Anil Kumar from Guntur and M Amarnath Reddy from Kadapa district filed a PIL case seeking CBI probe into the security lapses at the airport that led to the incident. They urged the court to call for a report from the authorities concerned on the security measures provided in the high security zone of the airports in both AP and Telangana States.

When the two petitions came up for hearing on Thursday, senior counsel S Niranjan Reddy, appearing for Jagan and YSR Congress, told the court that an attempt to murder was made on the life of Jagan, but the  State police department was taking the investigation into a pre-determined direction. Without any investigation into the incident, both the Chief Minister and the DGP stated that the attack was a publicity stunt. In fact, a larger criminal conspiracy took place at the highest level for the purpose of eliminating him for political reasons. To unearth the conspiracy angle a probe by an independent agency not under the control of the State government, was needed, he added.

On the other hand, AP advocate general Dammalapati Srinivas submitted that the probe by Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the incident was in progress and that the accused (Srinivasa Rao) and his parents were questioned. In fact, a PIL was already filed on the issue and the contents of the present two petitions overlapped, he added.

After perusing the contents of the PIL copy, Justice Sesha Sai opined that the contents were similar in nature and directed the registry to tag the present case with the PIL filed earlier on the issue.