ACB court will hear CID custody petition today

Vijayawada: A local court here on Monday posted hearing the petition by Andhra Pradesh CID seeking five-day police custody of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, as well as the bail pleas made by the former chief minister, to Tuesday.

Special public prosecutor Y N Vivekananda, representing the CID, said the court had posted these matters to Tuesday to hear them together. “We insisted that our police custody petition should be heard as well. In that backdrop, the court said it will hear both the custody and bail petitions together tomorrow (Tuesday) and then pass orders,” said Vivekananda.

The special public prosecutor noted that the second custody petition was necessitated as Naidu allegedly did not cooperate with the investigating officials during the first two-day custodial questioning on September 23 and 24. Further, the Naidu’s legal team, led by Supreme Court lawyer Pramod Dubey, was asked to file their counter, if any, on the custody petition by Tuesday. Though the CID’s prisoner on transit (PT) petitions in the AP FiberNet and Amaravati Inner Ring Road cases did not come up for hearing on Monday, Vivekananda said that they are expected to be taken up one by one at a later date.

However, he said that the court insisted on hearing the bail petition before the PT warrants as it is concerned with the personal liberty of an individual. The Andhra Pradesh CID filed a fresh petition in court on Monday seeking further five-day custody of Naidu in the Skill Development Corporation scam case.

After the two-day police custody of Naidu ended on Sunday evening, the court had extended his judicial remand till October 5. On Friday, the Andhra Pradesh High Court dismissed the TDP chief’s FIR quash petition, prompting Naidu to approach the Supreme Court. Naidu was arrested on September 9, for allegedly misappropriating funds from the Skill Development Corporation, which resulted in a purported loss of over Rs 300 crore to the state exchequer.