Hyderabad: A special Court of Telangana dismissed 380 cases out of 395 registered against MP and MLAs which speaks volume about the poor performance of Telangana police in spite of the Telangana government and its ministers describing it as number 1 in the country in policing. The major cause of the dismissal of 380 cases was that the prosecution was unable to present sufficient evidence against the accused.
The Forum for Good Governance (FGG) had alleged that the state police had failed to present the cases diligently and as a result the cases were dismissed which reflects poorly on the police performance.
According to the secretary of FGG, M Padmanabha Reddy, the Supreme Court had instructed the Telangana government to speed up 395 cases against the MP and MLAs after which the state had formed a special court on February 2, 2018 who had given its ruling after hearing the cases. The FGG had obtained this information through the Right to Information Act (RTI).
The Special Court had acquitted the accused in 380 cases while in the 15 cases the court found one accused guilty but he was pardoned and the court acquitted him. With regard to the 14 cases, four were sentenced to jail while the accused in 10 cases were fined. All those accused who are sentenced to jail approached the High Court to obtain stay orders and those who were fined paid their fines.
Thus the conviction rate out of 395 cases filed was a mere 3.5%. About the acquittal of the accused in 380 cases, the court judge said that the prosecution had failed to present sufficient proof. The Police Department had not filed an appeal against the Special Court’s ruling. “If this is the case, then, why does the police file the cases in the first place,” FGG Secretary asked.
According to the information obtained through RTI, the BJP MLA Raja Singh was sentenced to jail for one year, and TRS MP Kavita, TRS MLA D Nagender, and former MLA Venkateswarlu were sentenced to six month’s jail. The court imposed fines on leaders of various political parties like Komatireddy, Venkat Reddy, M Gopal, Vamshi Chand Reddy, Prem Singh Rathore, Jogu Ramanna, B Malliah, D Vinay Bhaskar Raja Singh P and Shankar Rao.
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