Court also asked him to cooperate with the ED, which is probing the case, and told him not to leave Chennai.
Magunta Raghava Reddy.
Delhi High Court on Tuesday, 18 July, granted interim bail of four weeks to YSRCP Ongole MP Magunta Srinivasulu’s son Magunta Raghava Reddy — who was arrested in the Delhi liquor scam case — on health grounds.
The court has also asked him to cooperate with the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing the case, and told him not to leave Chennai. It advised him to appear before the ED as and when required at its office in Chennai or New Delhi.
Whenever Raghava’s counsel filed a bail petition, the ED used to oppose it strongly. But this time the ED did not oppose bail to Raghava.
Earlier, the court granted bail to Raghava Reddy for 15 days in response to a petition filed stating that he had to meet his grandmother who was sick.
Raghava Reddy was arrested by the ED on 10 February, following a questioning session at the ED office in New Delhi.
Raghava was arrested based on information provided by two other people — businessman Gautam Malhotra from Punjab and Rajesh Joshi, an aide of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) communication head Vijay Nair. Both Malhotra and Joshi were arrested by the ED earlier.
Raghava was nabbed within a few days of the arrest of Hyderabad-based chartered accountant Butchibabu Gorantla by the CBI in the scam.
Butchibabu was the former auditor of BRS MLC K Kavitha, daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, whose name has also figured in the case. She has been questioned thrice by the ED so far.
The ED is probing the case based on an FIR issued by the CBI.
While hearing another petition regarding the case, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the CBI to place before it the copy of the charge sheet filed against businessmen Vijay Nair and Abhishek Boinpally in a corruption case related to the liquor scam case.
Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma was informed by the counsel for Nair and Boinpally that the copy of the charge sheet filed by the CBI before a trial court is not on the record of the high court.
“Let the copy of the charge sheet be placed on record. List on 6 October,” the high court said.
The high court was hearing the CBI’s pleas challenging the bail granted to Nair and Boinpally by the trial court. The CBI has also sought a stay on the trial court’s bail order.
The high court had earlier asked Nair and Boinpally to file their replies on the pleas.
Challenging the bail order, the CBI’s counsel had contended that every reasoning given by the trial court judge was “perverse”.
Nair’s counsel had earlier said the whole jurisprudence has changed in the country and now, it is jail and not bail.
The counsel had said the moment Nair got bail in the CBI case, he was arrested by the ED in the money-laundering case.
In its first prosecution complaint filed in the court, the ED said Nair, on behalf of leaders of the AAP, received kickbacks to the tune of ₹100 crore from the so-called “South Group”, as termed in the statements of various persons recorded during the investigation.
Nair, who was accused No 5 in the FIR issued by the CBI in the case, was the communication and media in charge of AAP.
According to the CBI, the prominent names in the “South Group” include Magunta Srinuvasula Reddy and his son Raghava, and Kavitha.
The investigation agency also said kickbacks were paid in advance to AAP leaders through Nair by the “South Group” as part of an agreement between them.
As against kickbacks that were paid, the South Group secured uninhibited access, and undue favours and attained stakes in established wholesale businesses and multiple retail zones over and above what was allowed in the policy, said the CBI charge sheet.
To recover the kickbacks, the partners of the South Group were given 65 percent stake in Indo-Spirits in collusion with Sameer Mahendru, the owner of Indo-Spirits.
This partnership formation was directed by Nair on the assurance of giving the wholesale business of Pernod Richard to Indo-Spirits.
The South Group controlled Indo-Spirits’ stakes through false representation, concealment and proxies, the investigation agency said.
Earlier, in the last week of April, Hyderabad-based chartered accountant Butchibabu Gorantla had turned approver in the case.
He became the second person to become an approver in the case after businessman Dinesh Arora, the man who allegedly coordinated the payment of the alleged kickbacks, according to the CBI.
Butchibabu allegedly acted as a representative on behalf of a politician from Telangana in the so-called “South Group”.
On 1 June, Hyderabad-based industrialist P Sarath Chandra Reddy also turned approver in a case pertaining to the Delhi liquor scam.
Earlier, the ED informed the court that it questioned 51 people in connection with the case and added that all the details of those who were questioned were mentioned in the charge sheet.
The case was registered on 17 August, 2022, against the ex-deputy chief minister of the AAP government in Delhi, Manish Sisodia — who was in charge as excise minister — and 14 others for an investigation into the alleged irregularities in framing and implementatiing the excise policy for 2021-22 and extending post-tender benefits to private persons.
Searches were also conducted at the premises of the accused at several locations, including in Delhi, Gurugram, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bengaluru, etc, which led to the recovery of incriminating documents/articles and digital records, the CBI said.
During the investigation, former Delhi deputy chief minister Sisodia and a few others were arrested.
Among those in custody are Hyderabad businessmen Abhishek Boinpally and Arun Ramachandra Pillai, and Vijay Nair.
Earlier, a charge sheet was filed on 25 November, 2022, against the then-CEO of a Mumbai-based private company and six others, including the two bureaucrats.
On 8 February, the CBI arrested Butchibabu for his alleged role in the formulation and implementation of the Delhi Excise Policy, thereby causing wrongful gain to Hyderabad-based wholesale and retail licenses and their beneficial owners under the Delhi Excise Policy for the year 2021-22.
In September 2022, CBI and ED officials raided Butchibabu’s house at Aravind Nagar in Domalguda in Hyderabad, his apartment at Sri Saikrishna Residency, and his office was also searched.
Several files and documents from various companies were found.
BRS MLC K Kavitha, whose name is also on the charge sheet, was questioned by the ED at its Delhi headquarters three times — on 11, 16 and 21 March — for a total of almost 30 hours.
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