FiberNet Scam: Naidu’s Bail Request Delayed Until Jan 17

Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the chief of the Telugu Desam party, has been scheduled by the Supreme Court for an anticipatory bail hearing in the FiberNet scandal until January 17. A ruling in Naidu’s request to have the skill development case dismissed had previously caused the court to postpone the hearing. Naidu was appealing the AP high court’s denial of his request for anticipatory bail in the FiberNet scam case, and his special leave petition was being heard by a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela Trivedi. While representing Andhra Pradesh, senior lawyer Ranjit Kumar charged Naidu with making political remarks regarding his imprisonment and the cases brought against him.

It was mentioned that this occurred in spite of the court’s ruling in a different special leave petition pertaining to a skill development scam case, which barred Naidu from making public remarks about the ongoing cases. A bail condition that Naidu should not discuss sub-judice matters arising out of the case was called for by the top court last month when it heard the state government’s appeal against an order issued by the AP high court granting regular bail to Chandrababu in the skill development scam case. In response to Kumar’s plea, Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra was directed verbally by Justice Bose to make sure that Naidu, his client, did not disclose the status of his plea in the FiberNet scam case to the public. The assistant advocate general for Andhra Pradesh is claimed to have made comments regarding the criminal cases against Naidu, which Luthra then brought up. In an intervening move, Justice Bose instructed the two top attorneys to request that their respective clients keep quiet about the ongoing proceedings, including the FiberNet swindle.