Annoyed YSR pulls up top cop

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is annoyed, first with the state police top brass and next with some of his own staff. For, their "inaction" has caused much embarrassment to his government and also let the opposition parties attack him personally in the Satyam Computers scandal. With news doing rounds in New Delhi that the top cops in the state were going rather slow on the Satyam scandal and also with opposition parties in the state mounting criticism that he was trying to shield Satyam ex-chief B Ramalinga Raju, the Chief Minister reportedly gave an earful to the state Director General of Police and other top brass of the police. Besides, the Chief Minister also reportedly pulled up his own principal secretary Jannat Hussain for not immediately translating his words into action on the case against Ramalinga Raju, highly-placed official sources said. The Chief Minister has now directed the DGP to go ahead with the case "in full steam" and nail the accused. "A two-day delay in the state police swinging into action in the case had done a lot of damage to the state and caught the Chief Minister in a defensive position. Later, the Chief Minister was forced to do a lot of answering on the issue which was otherwise avoidable," the sources pointed out. It was on January 7 that Ramalinga Raju admitted to fraud in Satyam Computers and the same afternoon the Chief Minister, who was camping in New Delhi, announced that the state Crime Investigation Department would launch a probe into the case. However, a clear two days have elapsed till the CID was actually asked to take up the investigation into the case. This, official sources said, was a lapse on part of the Chief Minister's principal secretary in charge of law and order affairs. By the time, there were too many adverse reports in the media that the state government was going slow on the probe as the Chief Minister and his son Jagan Mohan Reddy had "vested interests" in Satyam as well as its sister concern Maytas. The opposition too lost no time in launching a vitriolic attack against the Chief Minister as well as the government on the Satyam issue, leaving Rajasekhara Reddy embarrassed. Upon his return from Chennai on January 9, the Chief Minister gave just "half-an-hour" to the DGP to "go and arrest" Ramalinga Raju. Again, the police took more than three hours to execute the Chief Minister's Order. Besides, the Chief Minister was reportedly not properly briefed about the arrest and the basis for it. This made him announce that Raju and his brother were arrested based on Ramalinga's letter to the Satyam Board of Directors. This too left the Chief Minister furious as the fact was different. The entire issue also exposed yet again the growing "ego clashes and groupism" and also the lack of co-ordination among the top ranks of state police. This was said to be one reason why the state police additional DGP and official spokesman A K Khan remained in communicado since the arrest of Raju brothers and no authentic information was communicated to the media on the case. "This led to a lot of speculation in the media on the whole issue related to the police and battered the image of the state. This angered the Chief Minister forcing him to pull up the DGP," a top-ranking official in the Chief Minister's Office said on condition of anonymity.