- Telangana High Court quashes case
Chronicle Reporter, Bhopal
Former Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh M Gopal Reddy has got a big relief from Telangana High Court. Telangana High Court Justice K. Surendra has canceled the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case against retired IAS officer M Gopal Reddy in Madhya Pradesh.
In the case of tender tampering, the court said that money laundering case cannot continue against anyone after he is acquitted in the main case related to a serious crime. Accepting the criminal petition filed by Gopal Reddy, the judge said that when no offense was committed in the first instance then no action can be taken on the offence. While quashing the case, the judge said that any case based on such non-existent proceeds of crime cannot be continued. According to the information, Madhya Pradesh Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) had registered an FIR in the e-tender scam case in April 2019. FIR was registered. In this, the agency had raided the houses of some officials as well as M/s Mentana, a company from Hyderabad and Aditya Tripathi, a contractor from Bhopal. He was accused of taking bribes from officials.
Tender canceled after controversies
Last month, the Telangana High Court had quashed the ED case against Raju on the grounds that the ED’s money laundering case could not continue as the main case was over. Since the state had canceled the tender, there was no loss of public money. This meant that no crime had been committed. Therefore, when the case against Raju has been quashed, then there is no point in looking at the collusion of Gopal Reddy.
Made accused on the basis of statements
The agency had made former Chief Secretary M Gopal Reddy an accused on the basis of documents and statements received from both of them. In fact, the ED first suspected that some people had hacked the state tender portal and tampered with the tender process. Later the state canceled the tender. However, the Bhopal trial court later acquitted the other accused in the main criminal case.
