The Telangana government landed in an embarrassing situation on Wednesday as its Director-General of Police M. Mahender Reddy had to personally appear before the Hyderabad High Court to explain the reasons for the midnight preventive detention of Congress candidate A. Revanth Reddy.
A division bench comprising Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy raised several questions like which officer took the ‘drastic decision’ of Mr. Reddy’s midnight detention, what prompted that decision and if there were no alternatives to the course taken.
On Tuesday, the bench heard a habeas corpus petition filed by Mr. Reddy’s counsel as police whisked him away after raiding his house in Kodangal of Vikarabad district on Tuesday midnight. The bench directed Telangana Advocate-General B. S. Prasad to present the documents that had compelled the police to detain Mr. Reddy. Resuming the hearing on Wednesday, the judges perused the documents relating to orders of Mr. Reddy’s preventive detention.
