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ACB alleged Dammalapati Srinivas abused position to buy land in core capital area (Representational)
A former Additional Advocate General, two daughters of a Supreme Court judge and 10 others have been named in a case filed by the Andhra Pradesh anti-corruption bureau for alleged corruption in land deals.
In a statement, the anti-corruption bureau or ACB said former Andhra Pradesh Additional Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas allegedly abused his official position to buy land in the core capital area and the surrounding Capital Region Development Area (CRDA), using insider knowledge about planned location of the capital Amaravati before it was publicly announced in December 2014.
The ACB said Mr Srinivas allegedly bought land in the name of his family members between June and December 2014 in the area where former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had planned to build the state capital, Amaravati.
Mr Srinivas has filed a petition in the Andhra Pradesh High Court to prevent arrest. In his petition, he said the state government has been trying to conduct roving inquiries against him to create evidence by "phone-tapping, shadow policing and intimidating relatives", news agency PTI reported.
"This fiction is a part and parcel of the present government's political agenda to malign the earlier dispensation and dissenting persons by foisting false cases, intimidating people, scuttling dissent and chilling their voices," Mr Srinivas said in his petition.
Of the 12 others named in the case, Nuthalapati Sritanuja and Nuthalapati Sribhuvana are daughters of Supreme Court judge Justice NV Ramana. Justice Ramana in his latest declaration of assets in the Supreme Court had said his daughters are no longer his dependents.
"Dammalapati Srinivas obtained pecuniary advantage/valuable thing in the form of landed properties for his father-in-law, brother-in-law and his associates/acquaintances from June 2014 to December 2014 and later obtained such pecuniary advantage for himself and his wife through purchase of some of these properties in the years 2015 and 2016… Based on the complaint received by the Director General, ACB, a preliminary enquiry was conducted and based on the contents of the complaint and the enquiry report, the case was registered. Investigation is in progress," the ACB said in the statement.
The Andhra Pradesh government recently asked the centre to let the CBI look into suspicious land deals in and around Amaravati when Mr Naidu was Chief Minister.
Jagan Mohan Reddy led his party to a landslide victory in Andhra Pradesh last year and became the second Chief Minister of the state after its bifurcation. Mr Naidu's party was decimated by Jagan Reddy's YSR Congress.
