The Andhra Pradesh Assembly budget session, which is set to begin in the newly constructed Legislature complex in capital city, Amaravati, from Monday is likely to be marred by acrimony as Opposition Leader and YSR Congress president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy was booked with criminal cases for threatening IAS officer and Krishna district collector Babu A. in a road mishap incident.
The AP Cabinet led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday passed a resolution condemning the behaviour of Jagan in “verbally threatening” Babu when the latter was on duty at a government hospital in Nandigama near Vijayawada overseeing medical relief to the injured in a road accident involving a private bus that claimed 11 lives, including the driver’s life.
Babu, a 2003 batch IAS officer, belongs to Kerala and was allotted to the AP cadre. He won accolades from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making success digital payments in government departments in the wake of demonetization on 8 November 2016. The AP IAS officers’ association which met on Wednesday at the Secretariat in Amaravati condemned Jagan’s threat to the official and sought action against him. A luxury bus belonging to Divakar Travels, owned by TDP Anantapuram MP J.C. Diwakar Reddy’s family fell into a canal between two flyovers at Mullapadu village on Tuesday. The bus was coming from Bhubaneswar via Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada to Hyderabad. The bus was with 38 passengers at the time of the accident and all the survivors were injured.
The injured were rushed to hospitals in Nandigama, near the accident site and Vijayawada. When Jagan went to Nandigama hospital, the collector was there. When Jagan wanted to know from the doctors the post-mortem status of the dead including the driver, there was some altercation. Jagan accused the doctors of trying to avoid a post-mortem on the body of driver, suspected to be drunk at the time of accident.
When Jagan tried to snatch some papers from the hands of a doctor, the other staff tried to stop him. The collector too objected to Jagan and defended the doctors. Then, Jagan alleged that the collector was trying to shield the owners of the private transporters by avoiding a post-mortem on the driver’s body. The collector was supporting the bus owners because they belonged to the ruling TDP.
At one stage, Jagan, in front of the media cameras, told Babu: “We will try to send you to central jail for covering up this crime” and lashed out at other doctors for being “corrupt and saving the bus owners” responsible for the death of 11 persons. At the time, Jagan was accompanied with nine other party leaders including a former minister, Parthasarathi and a former MLA, S. Udaya Bhanu.
The doctors and the hospital staff later lodged a complaint with the police, who booked criminal cases against Jagan and nine of his party leaders. Some police personnel, too, joined the complaint, saying that Jagan also threatened them.