The Telangana High Court on Wednesday remained on the CBI court sentence of Karnataka Minister and BJP MLA Gali Janardhan Reddy in the 2009 Obulpuram Mining Company (OMC) illegal iron ore mining case and granted them bail.
Along with Reddy, the High Court also granted bail to three other people-brother-in-law of Janardhan Reddy and Managing Director of OMC, BV Srinivas Reddy, Mines and Geology, the then Director of Mines and Geology, Andhra Pradesh and Mehfuj Ali Khan, Assistant to Rajagopal and Janardhan Reddy.
The order was passed by Justice K Laxman, hearing a batch of criminal appeals filed by all four, who was convicted by the CBI court. HC has asked Reddy to present two individual bonds of 1 million as a bail status. Reddy and others were also banned from traveling abroad as bail status.
On 6 May, a special CBI court in Hyderabad convicted everyone and sentenced them to stringent imprisonment for seven years, which was illegally to excavate iron ore from belary and surrounding areas. The former minister and the other three had approached the Telangana High Court, arguing for suspending and granting them bail.
After the CBI court sentence, Janardhana Reddy, who was elected as a BJP MLA from Gangavati constituency in Karnataka, was disqualified from the Legislative Assembly in the 2023 assembly elections.
A CBI investigation into illegal mining between 2008-2011 found on the Supreme Court’s instructions found that a mining mafia allegedly run by Reddy and his colleagues illegally excavated iron ore from Bellary and surrounding areas and sold it to traders who took it to ports and exported to forest approval and exports.
The CBI registered its case in December 2009. In its charge sheet, the CBI accused Reddy and others of carrying illegal mining in the Bellary Reserve Forest Area. The charge sheet had alleged that the accused was involved in a criminal conspiracy and committed an offense of illegal mining of iron ore “by criminally tortured into the land of government land and other private individuals”.
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Although he was first detained in CBI in 2011, he was rearranged by a special investigation team formed by Karnataka Lokayukta in the mining case in 2015.
According to Reddy’s affidavit for the 2023 Karnataka assembly elections, Reddy has 20 pending criminal cases. Nine of these are being prosecuted by the CBI, eight of which are still in the test phase.
Immediately after his sentence in May, a special court ordered Reddy’s custody to the Bangalore Central Jail for the facility of trial in five CBI cases of illegal mining in five CBI cases of illegal mining.
Mining Case Telangana HC (T) Reddy Mining Scam Bail News (T) Reddy CBI Court sentence (T) Karnataka mining scam
