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The Telangana High Court recently directed the State Police to return and hand over the seized copies of the book titled “Sayudha Shanthi Swapnam’' written on Maoist leader Akkiraju Haragopal @ RK Ramakrishna to his wife K. Sirisha.

The bench of Justice K. Lakshman held that the entire action of the police in conducting search and seizure of Navya Printers, where the book was being printed, was illegal and the conclusion of the Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad city that the book was being published to promote Maoist ideology was sans examination of the book content.

Stressing that in the notification, whereby the Commissioner had directed the subordinate police officer to seal Navya Printers and seize printed book copies, no reason for such action was recorded, Court said, "merely because reports are received that books promoting Maoist ideology are being published is not a ground to take action under Section 9 of the Act, unless the content of such books are examined and the grounds for forming the opinion is recorded."

In November last year, police raided a printing press in Vidyanagar and seized books and registered cases against press operators Ramakrishnareddy and Sandhya. K. Sirisha, Ramakrishnareddy, and Sandhya filed separate petitions challenging the conduct of the police.

The press operators had sought Court's direction to quash the criminal proceedings initiated against them under Section 8(2) of the Telangana Public Security Act, 1992 (the Act) for undertaking printing of the book and RK's wife had further sought a consequential direction to all the respondents to release 1000 seized copies of the book.

They had alleged that the police had conducted the search and seized the material without following the due procedure laid down under the law and the contents of the complaint laced the ingredients of the offence alleged against the accused therein.

They had also submitted that there is nothing objectionable in the book and it contains articles, interviews, editorials, and statements, etc., of the senior Maoist leader which have already been published.

Therefore, alleging that the action by the police was violative of Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners had sought relief from the high court.

Ramakrishna, who recently died of ill-health in Chhattisgarh in October last year, was state leader of the Peoples War Party. He led his team of Peoples War Party when Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy was Chief Minister and was allegedly involved in peace talks between Naxalites and the Government in the year 2004.

Case Title: Mr. A. Ramakrishna Reddy & another v. The State of Telangana and one other