After the Supreme Court also rejected to grant anticipatory bail, police sources felt that former YSRCP minister Kakani Govardhan Reddy, who has been absconding from police scrutiny till over two months, left no option but surrender as all avenues have been closed for him in the illegal quartz mining case.
Despite being served notices by the Nellore police three times to appear for the hearing in the case, he did not turn up. As a result, the police have issued lookout notices to all airports preventing him from leaving the country. At the same time, a massive search is underway in the states of Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for him.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to grant him protection from arrest. Moreover, it expressed anger that he was trying to mislead the court by saying that there were no cases against him. It rejected his petition for anticipatory bail.
Kakani tried hard to get anticipatory bail in the case registered against him for illegally mining and transporting quartz ore and also the SC and ST cases registered against him for threatening tribals and evacuating their villages. Finally, he approached the Supreme Court on the 13th of this month.
A two-judge bench comprising Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Arvind Kumar heard the petition on Friday. Senior advocate Siddharth Dave appeared on behalf of Kakani, said that this was just a case filed as part of political vendetta. The High Court division bench can decide it.
The bench questioned why they had come all the way here? Dave replied that the division bench had adjourned the case to June 16, which is why they had come here. AP government lawyer Prerna brought to the attention of the bench that Kakani had misled the court in his petition that he had no previous criminal charges against him and that no such cases had been registered against him.
The court questioned how he was saying that there were cases. Prerna submitted the affidavit before the bench, saying that he himself had clarified the details of the cases in the 2024 election affidavit. After examining it, the court came down heavily on Kakani for trying to mislead them.
It concluded that the investigation in the case was ongoing and that the facts needed to be clarified, and in this context, exemption from arrest could not be granted. It said that it was dismissing the petition, refusing to grant anticipatory bail. However, when Dave pleaded that it should not be dismissed, it would be withdrawn, and the bench agreed.