CBI court continues Jagan Reddy’s bail

The CBI special court has refused to cancel the bail of YSR Congress president and Andhra Pradesh opposition leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and also allowed him to go on a vacation with his family to New Zealand for about two weeks between 15 May and 15 June. The court dismissed a petition filed by the CBI to cancel the bail. The CBI is unlikely to go for an appeal on the order.

The CBI has filed a petition before the special court seeking cancellation of bail to Jagan on the ground that he had tried to influence witnesses in various disproportionate assets cases pending before it. The main reason for the petition was an interview by former Chief Secretary P. Ramakanth Reddy in Jagan owned Sakshi Telugu news channel and Sakshi Telugu daily two months ago.

In the interview, Ramakanth Reddy, who was appointed as the Chief Secretary by Jagan’s father and then Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in 2008, said that the CBI cases had no legal weight. The former CS said Jagan had never tried to interfere or influence the decisions of the government when his father was the CM.

The CBI contended that this interview was amounted to influencing other witnesses in the cases. It maintained that Jagan had violated the terms of his five-year-old bail by airing and publishing the interview of Ramakanth Reddy, who was also a witness in one of the eight charge-sheets filed in the DA cases.

CBI special court magistrate Venkata Ramana, however, on Friday disagreed with the argument of the CBI. The court felt that publication of an interview by one of the witnesses in a media held by the accused cannot be a valid reason to cancel his bail.