YSRC rebel MP Ramakrishna Raju does a Houdini act, flies off to Delhi

HYDERABAD: YSRCP rebel MP Raghu Ramakrishna Raju executed a perfect Houdini act at the Military Hospital (MH) in Secunderabad on Wednesday. Hours later, he surfaced in Delhi.
Surprisingly, on Tuesday, the Narasapuram MP had expressed a desire to stay back at the hospital for four more days, citing health reasons. Soon after getting discharged from the hospital, the MP took a flight to Delhi.
The dramatic turn of events came days after the Supreme Court granted the MP bail in a criminal case registered against him in Andhra Pradesh.
His advocate S Sri Venkatesh said they were apprehensive about his arrest again in a different case lodged by the Andhra Pradesh police. Several criminal cases have been filed against Raju for allegedly spreading hatred against certain communities in the state.
Raju had obtained stay in some of these cases from the AP high court. The apex court had granted him bail in the case filed by AP CID, which charged him with spreading hatred in society and creating disaffection against the state government.
In the meantime, the CBI court in Hyderabad posted to June 1 the petition filed by Raju seeking cancellation of AP chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s bail in the quid pro quo case granted eight years ago.
Raju’s counsel S Sri Venkatesh objected when advocates representing CBI and Jagan sought time again to file their counters. He wanted the court to impose costs for these ‘dilatory tactics’ adopted by the respondents.
“They need not cite lockdown as a reason, they could as well file their counters online,” he said, objecting to the argument of Jagan’s counsel G Ashok Reddy, who maintained that it was not easy during lockdown to obtain signatures and filing affidavits without any express permission from the authorities to roam around. The judge, however, said that he would hear the matter on June 1 regardless of the status of the counters.