CBI says Gali intimidated 3 key witnesses

HYDERABAD: The CBI on Tuesday informed the AP high court that three witnesses, who deposed against Gali Janardhana Reddy, the prime accused in the illegal mining case, were later threatened by him. The terrified witnesses were taken under the protective custody of the CBI and provided round-the-clock security, senior counsel Ashok Bhan appearing for the investigative agency told Justice Samudrala Govindarajulu while urging the court to cancel the bail that was granted to Gali by the trial court.The counsel then handed over to the judge relevant documents to substantiate his claim in this regard.
The judge sought to know from the CBI's counsel the grounds under which a high court could intervene in a trial court order. To this, the counsel, quoting several orders of the Supreme Court, said that the higher courts can cancel the trial court's order if the latter fails to take relevant material into consideration and instead relies on irrelevant ones.
When Bhan spoke at length on the loot of national wealth committed by Gali in the form of illegal mining of iron ore, the judge sought to know from the Centre's counsel the quantum of area where iron ore is available in the country. While iron ore could be available in lakhs of hectares across the country, the papers placed before me say that Gali was given lease over an extent of 68 hectares, the judge said.
The CBI counsel put the loss to the national exchequer on account of Gali's illegal mining in both AP and Karnataka at Rs 884 crore. He also informed the court that Gali did not mine much in the 68 hectares given to him by the AP government because the OMC owner was aware it will not yield good quality ore.
Alluding to a possible divine punishment,
Ashok Bhan informed the judge that Gali in his greed had even destroyed the Sugalamma temple in the Bellary reserve forest area on Sept 5, 2006, while indiscriminately excavating the iron ore in unauthorized areas. "Gali faced the consequence for this misdeed exactly on the same day after five years he was arrested on Sept 5, 2011, in the illegal mining scam case," Bhan said.
The CBI counsel went on to explain to the court how Gali procured the mining lease in AP in connivance with officials like the then industries and mines department secretary Y Srilakshmi, director of mines wing V D Rajagopal and others. "Srilakshmi was responsible for creating note file words like 'captive mining' which successfully eliminated other contenders for the same mine and for removing the same crucial words by the time the GOs were issued," the counsel said.
Gali proposed to set up Brahmani Steels in Kadapa district and wrote in his application that the ore he would extract from the AP mine would be used exclusively in the Brahmani steel plant for producing steel, Bhan said. However, Gali and the AP officials played a huge mischief in this regard and as a result of this, the OMC owner could sell in the open market iron ore worth crores of rupees which was allotted to him for producing steel, the CBI counsel said. The hearing would continue on Wednesday also.