The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear, on October 17, a plea for the anticipatory bail filed by former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in the FiberNet scam case even as it drew an assurance from the State to not press for the TDP leader’s arrest in a trial court hearing due on October 16.
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A Bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M. Trivedi took note of a submission by senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, for Mr. Naidu, that his client’s plea for anticipatory bail would become infructuous if he was arrested on October 16, a day before the scheduled Supreme Court hearing. The trial court had directed the Andhra Pradesh CID to produce Mr. Naidu before it on October 16.
“We are not passing any order, but, Mr. Rohatgi, do not arrest him on Monday before our hearing… he is anyway in custody,” Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M. Trivedi addressed senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi and advocate Mahfooz A. Nazki, representing the State.
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Mr. Rohatgi said he would, on October 16, simply ask the trial court to adjourn the hearing to Wednesday.
“There will be no arrest on Monday,” he assured.
The State was issued notice and given time till Monday to file its counter-affidavit in the FiberNet case.
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Mr. Naidu is already under remand in connection with the skill development scam case. The Bench is currently hearing Mr. Rohatgi’s submissions in response to a petition filed by Mr. Naidu to quash the FIR registered against him in the case.
Meanwhile, Mr. Naidu was compelled to move the apex court in the FiberNet scam case after the Andhra Pradesh High Court rejected his plea for pre-arrest bail.
Both the skill development scam case and the plea for bail in the FiberNet case was heard separately by the Bench.
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The FiberNet case involves allegations of tender manipulation against Mr. Naidu for alloting work in the first phase of the AP FiberNet Project of ₹330 crore to a favoured company, causing loss to the public exchequer.
The State claimed that Mr. Naidu used his “influence to revoke the blacklisting on M/s Terasoftware and got the contract awarded to the company by silencing the protests from other bidders”.
In his submissions in court on Friday, Mr. Luthra invoked that his client had immunity under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the State did not get prior sanction before investigating him.
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Mr. Luthra said the alleged transactions happened in 2017, and the case was politically motivated.
The senior lawyer pointed out that three accused in the case were on anticipatory bail, three others were given regular bail and the others were not even arrested.
“Now, when the elections are around the corner, they want to arrest me,” he submitted.