HC seeks additional information from Shankar Rao

HYDERABAD: Taking up P Shankar Rao’s public interest litigation alleging a red sanders scam involving chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, among others, a High Court bench asked the former minister how he had stumbled upon the ‘scam’.Shankar Rao’s counsel replied that the ‘facts’ of the scam were supplied to his client orally by people during the then minister’s tours in Chittoor, Kadapa, Kurnool and Nellore districts.The bench, comprising chief justice Madan B Lokur and justice P V Sanjay Kumar, then asked to see these oral representations submitted to court in the form of an additional affidavit.The next hearing was then posted to April 16.Shankar Rao’s case is that precious red sanders was sold away by the government at throwaway prices.He said he had received representations from people in Chittoor, Kadapa, Kurnool and Nellore about a “red sanders scam” involving the loot of hundreds of crores of public money after Kiran Kumar Reddy became chief minister in Nov.2010.He alleged that the chief minister and forest minister S Vijayarama Raju disposed of about 2022 metric tonnes of the contrband wood worth about `500 crore without calling for global tenders.He wants the High Court to order a CBI probe into the ‘scam’ and registration of a criminal case against the culprits.Shankar Rao’s targets in the petition are the chief minister, the forest minister, special chief secretary (environment and forests) Janaki R Kondepi, the principal chief conservator of forests, Hyderabad -based company Zitan Trading Corporation, Andhra Fogaku Pvt Ltd and the Power Grip Resources Pvt Ltd of Singapore and others.