Hyderabad (The Hawk): The Telangana High Court on Tuesday dismissed the allegations brought against Y. Srilakshmi, a senior IAS officer from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, in the Obulapuram mining case brought by the CBI.
In the ten-year-old case, for which she had already served time in jail, the judge handed her a clean bill of health.
The High Court dismissed the CBI's supplemental charge sheet due to a lack of supporting evidence.
Her request to have the case dropped by the CBI court was denied last month, and she then appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
On March 30, 2012, the CBI filed a charge sheet against her in relation to the suspected unlawful mining operations of the Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) in the Bellary reserve forest in Anantapur.
As secretary for industries and commerce in the then-united Andhra Pradesh government from 2007 to 2009, Srilakshmi was accused by the investigation agency of abusing her position.
She is accused of abusing her authority by working behind the scenes to give OMC unlawful mining licences. She was added as the case's sixth accuser.
The central agency had asserted that she had colluded in the awarding of mining leases in Anantapur with OMC promoter and mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy.
The top court had already twice rejected her discharge applications.
It had decided that the CBI court might start her trial in September 2021.
The CBI detained Srilakshmi, an IAS official from the 1988 batch, on November 28, 2011. She was then taken into jail by the authorities and placed on administrative leave.
She was released from prison in October 2012.
After the government lifted her suspension in 2016, she began working as an IAS officer assigned to Telangana.
The Andhra Pradesh government appointed Srilakshmi in 2020 after she obtained a decision from the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).
She received a promotion last year as special chief secretary. Her appointment as chief secretary is anticipated to be made possible by the High Court's decision on Tuesday.
The CBI had filed a case against OMC on December 7, 2009, in response to claims of extensive unlawful mining and anomalies in the allocation of mining leases to OMC in Bellary, the Reserve Forest area in Obulapuram, and Malapanagudi villages in Anantapur district.
(Inputs from Agencies)