Hyderabad: The division bench of the High Court at Hyderabad comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice S V Bhatt on Friday observed that the AgriGold management has committed a fraud on the High Court by concealing their properties in the sworn affidavit filed before the Court.
Hearing the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on the case, the bench reacted sharply to the revelation made by the Additional Advocate General of Andhra Pradesh State government that the AgriGold Company had not revealed 70 more properties to the High Court. The AgriGold management had given details of these properties to the CID, the Additional Advocate General told the court.
“Just a few days of custodial interrogation has brought out such information. We are sure there would be more properties that will tumble out. We had been stressing for such action from the beginning,” said the bench. The bench wanted the Telangana State police also to pursue the criminal action against the company bosses.
Telangana Special Government Pleader Sharat submitted to the court that they had already sought custody of the accused. He also complained to the bench that the Andhra Pradesh police were not cooperating with the Telangana State officials in investigating this case.
The Acting Chief Justice advised that at least on this issue concerning lakhs of poor and middle class depositors, both the State governments must act in a coordinated manner. The Andhra Pradesh Additional Advocate General Srinivas assured the Court that all relevant material would be shared with the Telangana counterparts.
The Counsel for the Committee appointed by the Court to oversee the auction of the attached properties of Agrigold informed the bench that they had identified three main reasons for the poor response to the sale of properties in the first phase of e-auction.
Quoting much higher reserve price per square feet or per square yard than prevalent market rate, non-maintenance/bad condition of the properties, lack of time for mounting extensive pre-sale campaign for the agencies. The committee proposed corrections in all of these aspects to which the bench also concurred.
One of the three agencies tasked with the job of conducting the sales, E-Procurement Technologies, had expressed unwillingness to continue with the task. The bench relieved them from the job and asked the committee to assign the properties to the remaining two agencies. The matter has been posted for hearing after two weeks.
