Jagan sent to judicial custody; CBI calls him a swindler

                                                                                    
A special court Monday remanded YSR Congress  Party leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy to judicial custody for 14 days in a disproportionate assets case. The CBI court sent the Lok Sabha member to judicial custody till June  11. The court dismissed his bail petition.
Judge A Pullaiah, who heard arguments from both sides in the morning,  pronounced his order around 4.30 p.m.
Jagan, who was arrested on Sunday, was produced before a CBI court in Hyderabad.
Seeking 14 days police remand, senior CBI counsel Ashok Bhan alleged that YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy "sent (bribe amount) abroad and got it reinvested in his business through hawala racket".
"Jagan never cooperated in the investigation during the three-day questioning period in true sense," the CBI counsel alleged.
"Jagan can no longer masquerade as a victim of CBI probe. He cannot assail CBI for being victimised. He has hoodwinked the people of a huge sum of money. We will now show the people about his swindling of money. He cannot seek public sympathy He has deprived poor people and caused them irreparable loss and in turn enriched himself by dubious mechanism by sending the funds abroad and getting the same invested in his companies," the counsel alleged.
CBI has charged Jagan under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 477A (falsification of accounts) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
"Investments to the tune of Rs. 1234 crore have been made in his (Jagan's) companies and he himself got enriched by Rs. 300 crore. There are certain traces and he did not cooperate on the same," Bhan alleged.
"It is a white collar crime committed by 74 accused, including Jagan, and so far chargesheets have been filed against 24 accused. All the accused in custody (industrialist N Prasad, senior bureaucrat KV Brahmananda Reddy) have revealed certain glaring facts about the case and we have to confront Jagan on the information provided," the CBI counsel claimed.
CBI has sent Letters Rogatory to Mauritius and Luxembourg to get more information as there were alleged investments to the tune of several crores in Sandur Power by Jagan.
"Luxembourg-based Asian Infra is suspected owner of Sandur Power," the agency submitted.
There are similar transactions in the "exclusive knowledge" of Jagan which will be known only after getting his custody, the CBI counsel said.
"Jagan got enriched enormously in a short span of four years after influencing his father Rajashekhar Reddy, the then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in getting ill gotten money into his own firms from investors who doled out favours as part of quid pro quo," the counsel alleged.
"Some investing companies got alloted thousands of acres of agriculture land in turn of investments after Jagan influenced his father," the agency further alleged.
Further investigations need to be carried out on the role of Jagan with regard to the influence made on his father, the agency said.

YSRCP will sweep the Andhra by-polls, says his sister

                                   

                                                                                          

Jagan will sweep the Andhra by-polls, says his sister

Vijayamma evicted after staging protest at Dilkusha

                                                                                    

YSR Congress honorary president Y. S. Vijayamma had baptism by fire as the leader of her party when she was physically removed and bundled into a police van for protesting against the arrest of her son Jaganmohan Reddy outside the Dilkusha guest house here on Sunday.

However, she continued the dharna outsider her residence in Jubilee Hills.

Accompanied by family members, Ms. Vijayamma, MLA from Pulivendula, staged a three-hour long dharna on the pavement outside the guest house after meeting her son.

She was joined in the protest by daughter Sharmila, son-in-law Anil Kumar, Jagan's wife Bharati and close relative Y. V. Subba Reddy besides Congress MP Sabbam Hari and MLC Jupudi Prabhakar.

Even before Mr. Jagan's arrest was formally announced, tense family members drove from the Lotus Pond residence to the guest house and had a brief meeting with him.

On emerging, Ms. Vijayamma, fighting back tears, spoke to the large contingent of media before staging an impromptu dharna.

Explanation sought

In what could be a preview of the election campaign which she is now called upon to spearhead, she wondered what would happen to her son now in view of grave apprehensions about the manner in which her husband died in a helicopter crash in September 2009.

“Is this the reward you are giving to YSR who wanted to make Rahul Gandhi the Prime Minister”, she asked.

She demanded an explanation about the circumstances under which Mr. Jagan had been arrested and the basis for it. “What mistake has he committed. Was it wrong to have gone on “Odarpu Yatra” and honour the promise made to people. Is he being harassed because of his popularity among the people and the by-elections”, she asked.

Ms. Vijayamma and her family members put up a stiff resistance when police tried to remove them.

They first bundled Mr. Subba Reddy, Dr. E. C. Gangi Reddy, Jagan's father-in-law, and Jupudi Prabhakar into police vans.

Later, women police dragged the others, pushed them into waiting vehicles and drove them to their residence.
from Hindu

Meteoric rise of Jagan in State politics

                                                                        

It was a meteoric rise for Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra politics after fate cut short the life of his father and then Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash on September 2, 2009.

Even though he became an MP from Kadapa Lok Sabha in 2009 May elections, the tragic death of his father propelled him to the centre-stage of State politics after 151 of the 156 Congress MLAs signed a petition urging the Congress high command to make him the Chief Minister. However, the AICC leaders frowned upon the idea and made veteran leader K. Rosaiah to take over the reins.

Till then Mr. Jagan, YSR's only son, was living in Bangalore to look after the business interests pertaining to power, cement, media and other sectors. Even as Mr. Rosaiah began his innings as Chief Minister, Mr. Jagan became a virtual power centre in the State with several Ministers and legislators frequently flocking to him. In a bid not to disturb the equilibrium in the party, the high command was forced to retain most of the Ministers who were hardcore YSR loyalists in Mr. Rosaiah's Cabinet.

Seeking to consolidate his position politically, Mr. Jagan planned to launch a tour of the State to console the families of those who committed suicide or died of heart attack following the unexpected death of YSR. With AICC president Sonia Gandhi rejecting his proposal to go on the tour, he defied the leadership and launched ‘Odarpu Yatra'.

He later parted ways with the Congress and launched his own YSR Congress Party on March 12, 2011.

Following separate petitions filed by the then Minister P. Shankar Rao and Telugu Desam leader, K. Yerran Naidu, the Andhra Pradesh High Court directed the CBI to probe into allegations of amassing of wealth illegally by Mr. Jagan. Subsequently, the CBI registered a case on August 17, 2011 by naming Mr. Jagan as the first accused in the disproportionate assets case. The FIR mentioned that Mr. Jagan and his father “who was holding high constitutional position have adopted several ingenious ways to amass illegal wealth which resulted in great public injury”. The modus operandi followed by the duo was to dole out public properties, licenses, allotting/ granting various projects, including the SEZs, mining leases, ports, real estate permissions and other benefits to the persons of their choice in violation of established norms and procedures with a clear understanding of “quid pro quo”, the FIR stated.

The beneficiaries, in turn, have given bribes to Mr. Jagan under the guise of purchasing shares in companies floated by him at huge and unsubstantiated premiums.

The IPC Sections under which Mr. Jagan and others were charged include 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 477-A ( falsification of accounts). They were also charged under sections of the Prevention of the Corruption Act.

from Hindu

A pre-emptive strike to deter MLAs flocking to Jagan camp

                                                                           

The systematic pursuing of cases against YSR Congress leader Jaganmohan Reddy, followed by the just concluded three-day intensive grilling by the CBI — which received wall to wall coverage on Telugu channels — has already set the stage for a groundswell of sympathy for him. His arrest on Sunday evening and the announcement that his mother Vijayamma — widow of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, who died in a helicopter crash in 2009 — will take charge from Monday of the campaign for the coming by-elections to one Lok Sabha seat and 18 Assembly constituencies can only add to the highly surcharged atmosphere in Andhra Pradesh. Already, the entire State is in a state of high alert, while the capital Hyderabad has been heavily barricaded to prevent a possible breakdown of law and order, arising out of rival shows of strength by Jagan loyalists and Congress supporters.

Why was Mr. Reddy arrested? A senior Congress functionary told The Hindu that the situation had so spun out of control that it “did not have any political strategy” for the State, but that “the decision that Jagan would have to be arrested was taken a while ago.” The logic is that as the Congress has very low expectations of performing well in the June 12 polls, it should focus instead on keeping its flock together: the arrest of Mr. Reddy, it is felt, will deter Congress MLAs and Ministers sympathetic to his cause from following him out of the party, and prevent the collapse of the Kiran Kumar Reddy government. It will also give the government, the Congress feels, time to dismantle Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy's empire. The Congress' current limited objective is to keep its government in Andhra Pradesh intact till 2014, when both the State and general elections will be held, in the hope that it can recover some ground by then. An indication that the party feels the situation in the State is hopeless for it, Congress sources said, is that the general secretary in charge of A.P., Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, has been focussing his energies on the other State he is in charge of — Jammu and Kashmir.

But the Congress' political opponents are pointing out that if Mr. Reddy misused his position when his father was Chief Minister to amass wealth disproportionate to his means, so had many other YSR loyalists, now in the Congress, with some in the present State government. The logical follow-up to the arrest of Mr. Reddy will be the interrogation by the CBI — and the possible arrest — of these others.

Apart from that, if the YSR Congress sweeps the June 12 by-polls — as it may well do — it could lead to an exodus from the Congress to it, as Congressmen position themselves for 2014 by switching to the winning side. In 2009, the Congress won a whopping 33 Lok Sabha seats from the State; now, the party is fighting on two fronts — one trying to stem the growing popularity of the YSR Congress, largely in the Andhra region, and the other, figuring out how to dampen the agitation in Telangana.

The only trick the Congress has up its sleeve is the fact it got actor — and Kapu leader — Chiranjeevi to merge his party, Praja Rajyam Party, with the Congress recently. Congress sources say Chiranjeevi is likely to be included in the Union Cabinet when the next reshuffle takes place. That may be a signal to the Kapus, but what of the Reddys, the mainstay of the Congress? For the Congress, there are troubled times ahead in the beleaguered State.

Congress plays down arrest of Jagan

                                                                              

The Congress high command had come to the firm conclusion that the odds were anyway stacked against the party in the ensuing by-elections and there was no need to spare Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy under these circumstances.

This was the refrain among Congress leaders while justifying Mr. Jagan's arrest. A Minister quoted an AICC leader as saying that “why should Mr. Jagan Reddy be spared when our own Minister has been arrested in the illegal assets case.”

For record's sake, Congress leaders played down the political implications of the arrest of the YSR Congress president by describing it as routine work done by the CBI probing illegal assets case. PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana said that the arrest was neither a loss nor gain for the ruling party. “How is the Congress party connected to his arrest,” he told The Hindu . Remaining guarded in their reaction, they tried to differentiate between the corruption cases filed against the Kadapa MP and the sympathy that his party might gain in the by-elections.

from Hindu

CBI seeks 14-day custody of Jaganmohan Reddy in DA case

                                                                              
HYDERABAD: Amidst unprecedented security, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) produced YSR Congress president and Kadapa parliamentarian Jaganmohan Reddy in the Nampally courts on Monday morning, charging him with looting public property.

The CBI sought his custody for 14 days. Jagan is accused number one in the assets case and was arrested on Sunday evening by the CBI after three days of questioning.

Senior CBI counsel Ashok Bhan alleged that YSR Congress chief Jaganmohan Reddy "sent (bribe amount) abroad and got it reinvested in his business through hawala racket".

"Jagan never cooperated in the investigation during the three-day questioning period in true sense," the CBI counsel alleged.
"Jagan can no longer masquerade as a victim of the CBI probe. He has robbed public properties. Investments to the tune of Rs 1234 crore have been made in his (Jagan's) companies and he himself got enriched by Rs 300 crore. There are certain traces and he did not cooperate on the same," Bhan alleged.

"It is a white collar crime committed by 74 accused, including Jagan, and so far charge sheets have been filed against 24 accused. All the accused in custody (industrialist N Prasad, senior bureaucrat K V Brahmananda Reddy) have revealed certain glaring facts about the case and we have to confront Jagan on the information provided," Ashok Bhan appearing for the CBI told principal special judge A Pullaiah. The CBI was responding to the YSR Congress chief's charge on the morning of his arrest to a private news channel that he was a victim of the investigative agency which continued to question him on the same issues despite him giving the replies and cooperating with t
Apart from Jagan, the other accused in the assets case, including his financial auditor V Vijay Sai Reddy, Vanpic promoter Nimmagadda Prasad and bureaucrat K V Brahmananda Reddy also appeared before the principal special judge in response to the summons issued by the court. Mopidevi Venkata Ramana, former excise minister and another accused in the case, did not make his appearance.

The court proceedings are expected to go on for a few hours as the judge will take a decision on the CBI's plea for Jagan's custody only after hearing his counsel which include top Supreme Court advocates who flew in from New Delhi on Monday morning.

The CBI convoy carrying Jagan left Dilkusha Guest House, the makeshift office of the investigative agency where he was lodged for the night after his arrest the previous day, a little before 10 am for the Nampally courts about 5 kms away where an unprecedented security deployment was in place. At about the same time, Jagan's mother and Pulivendula MLA Y S Vijayamma along with a few family members staged a 'dharna' (sit-in) in protest against her son's arrest in front of their Lotus Pond residence in Jubilee Hills. The police claimed that she did not have permission to hold a sit-in protest, indicating that she could be arrested in a short while.

Meanwhile, the 'bandh' (shutdown) called by the YSR Congress in protest against Jagan's arrest was by and large peaceful and partial across the state. Most parts of Rayalaseema including Jagan's native district Kadapa observed the shutdown while it was partial in the Andhra region and largely ignored in the Telangana region.

In the city, the shutdown was partial barring stray incidents of stone pelting on state road transport buses.