Enforcement Directorate authorities filed a contempt of court petition in Telangana High Court here seeking action against two top officials for not complying with the HC orders to hand over all documents relating to 12 drug trafficking cases investigated by Prohibition and Excise department in July-August of 2017.
Several Tollywood personnel were questioned by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the P&E department in these cases registered in 2017. They were not prosecuted further reportedly for lack of evidence. The present contempt petition was filed by ED represented by Hyderabad zonal office deputy director seeking action against Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and P&E SIU Director Sarfaraz Ahmad.
The ED’s contempt petition was based on the directions passed on this February 2 by a division bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma in a PIL petition filed by Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president A. Revanth Reddy. In an interim application of the plea, Mr. Reddy sought a direction to the State government to hand over all documents relating to the 2017 drugs cases (involving Tollywood personnel) to the ED to conduct further probe and take action against the persons, invoking provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The bench directed the State government to hand over all documents relating to the 12 drug cases along with phone call data record of all the persons involved to the ED within a month. The bench made it clear that non-compliance of its order in the matter would be viewed seriously by the court.
Citing the HC orders, the ED said said it had written a letter to P&E authorities on this February 8 seeking to provide the digital data and documents related to the drugs cases. A detailed table on the materials sought by the ED was also enclosed in the letter.
The ED maintained that till date no information was received from the P&E officials and this was hampering its ongoing investigation into the drugs cases. A notice was also sent to the Chief Secretary and the P&E SIU Director stating that not furnishing information would amount to wilful disobedience to HC directions issued on this February 2.
The ED requested the court to punish the two top officials under sections 10 to 12 of the Contempt of Court Act.
