The Andhra Pradesh High Court (HC) on Friday pulled up state Director General of Police (DGP) Gautam Sawang over the arrest of former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. The court directed the DGP and Visakhapatnam police to file an affidavit with complete details on how they took Chandrababu into preventive custody by serving a notice under Section 151 of CrPC.
The court wanted to know how the state police could arrest Naidu under a section meant for preventive arrest of a person, who may commit an offence.
On Thursday evening amid high drama, police arrested Naidu at Visakhapatnam airport, when he reached the district as part of the TDP's Praja Chaitanya Yatra. The yatra has been planned across the city, in protest against the government's decision to shift the capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam.
While hearing the lunch motion petition filed by TDP leader T Sravan Kumar, who sought the intervention of the court to allow peaceful protests and meetings for Praja Chaitanya Yatra in Visakhapatnam, the bench of Chief Justice JK Maheswari and Justice N Jayasurya found fault with the police and wondered how they could first grant permission for the protest and then take Naidu into preventive custody, The New Indian Express reported.
Sravan also sought adequate police security for these programmes. The court asked the police to file a detailed counter affidavit and postponed the hearing to March 2. The bench observed that permissions should be accorded to both the ruling and the Opposition parties with the same conditions, and the Opposition should not be treated differently.
The court observed that section 151 CrPC (arrest to prevent the commission of cognizable offences) did not seem applicable, Mumbai Mirror reported.