The court has remanded former YSRCP minister Kakani Govardhan Reddy till the 17th of this month in another case of illegal dumping of liquor. In this case, registered by the Indukurpet Excise Police in Nellore district, Kakani (A-8) was produced before the Fourth Additional District Court on a PT warrant on Thursday. After arguments from both sides, the judicial officer issued an order remanding Kakani.
During the last general elections, the Excise Flying Squad seized a dump of 69,000 liquor bottles in Vidavur and Muthukur Madalam of Podalakur mandal in Sarvepalli constituency. At that time, two YSRCP leaders were arrested and the case was handed over to the Excise officials. However, since the YSRCP was in power, the case was closed.
Kurapati Vijayababu of Podalakur recently filed a complaint seeking a retrial of this case. He told the excise department that he would submit the evidence he had if the case was reopened. The excise police, which started the investigation based on Vijayababu’s complaint, included Kakani as A-8 in this case.
While interrogating A-1 Surendra Reddy on the issues of which shop and on which date the seized 69,000 bottles were sold, the link to Kakani in this matter came to light. When his call list was examined, it was found that he had spoken to Kakani several times during those two days.
There are a total of 35 government liquor shops in the Sarvepalli constituency, and it was recorded that additional sales were made from 25 of them. The average sale in those shops is a thousand bottles per day, but the excise officials found that an additional 1,800 to 2,000 bottles, or about 80 thousand to one lakh bottles, went to the dump during those two days.
It is believed that these were scanned from the depot with the shop code. To confirm this, the matter was brought to the attention of the government. If the details come from the state excise department, it is possible to hold the then depot manager responsible and take action.
The excise officials are likely to take Kakani into custody in two to three days for the investigation of this case. YSRCP leaders dumped lakhs of liquor bottles 10 days before the last election notification to entice voters. The state excise department is likely to examine whether there was a huge increase in liquor sales in one or two days during the election.