Chennai: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday sentenced five IAS officers with jail term and penalty after they were found guilty of contempt of court.
The direction was issued when the court was hearing a contempt petition filed by Tallapaka Savitrama from Kanpur village of Venkatachalam mandal in Nellore district. A Times of India report said that the officials were found guilty of wilful disobedience of the court’s orders.
The report said, senior IAS officer Manmohan Singh, the then principal secretary for revenue was sentenced to four weeks of imprisonment along with a penalty of Rs 1,000 and principal secretary for finance SS Rawat was sentenced to one month of imprisonment along with a penalty of Rs 2,000. If they fail to pay the penalty, then their jail term will be extended by a week, the court said as per the report.
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Nellore district collector Revu Mutyala Raju was sentenced to two weeks of imprisonment along with a penalty of Rs 1,000 while previous district collectors - KNV Chakradhar and MV Seshagiri Babu - were slapped a penalty of Rs 2,000 each along with a condition to spend one week in jail if they fail to pay the penalty, the report said.
The petitioner filed the writ petition in 2017 after her assigned land was acquired for setting up National Institute of Mentally Handicapped by the state government. Subsequently, the court directed the government to pay compensation as per the government order within three months. As no compensation was made, the petitioner filed a contempt of court in 2018, according to the report.