Photographs Of Police-Nayeeumuddin Nexus Leaked

Weeks after the Telangana government told the Hyderabad High Court that there was no proof of their nexus with the dreaded gangster, photographs allegedly showing senior policemen interacting with renege Maoist and underworld kingpin Mohammed Nayeemuddin have surfaced on social media.

The police are saying that the photographs in circulation could be genuine and have been sent to the forensic department for verification.

They also said that several photographs were seized from the dens of Nayeem after the encounter and all of them had been submitted to the court.

"The SIT has questioned as many as 11 police officials on the suspicion of their alleged nexus with Nayeem, but nothing concrete has emerged so far. We will question some more officials. These photographs could be part of the evidence and not the only evidence to prove the nexus between the police officials concerned and Nayeem," they added.

Nayeem, involved in over 100 criminal cases, including the murder of a former top police officer, was killed in a gun-battle with security forces in the Mahbubnagar district in August 2016.

As per reports, one of the photographs shows Maddipati Srinivas Rao, currently an Additional Superintendent of Police with the Crime Investigation Department (CID), sharing a drink with Nayeem. In another picture, Additional SP (counter intelligence) Chandrasekhar and inspector Saidulu are seen dining with the gangster.

Similarly, Sangareddy Deputy SP Tirupathanna is seen along with Nayeem at a Ganesh pandal, supposedly in Bhongir where the gangster regularly held Ganesh Chaturthi festivities in the late 2000s. Tirupathanna was then an inspector with the Bhongir police station. And in another photograph, senior cop Venkat Reddy is seen with Nayeem at a function.

Earlier, Telangana Home Secretary Rajiv Trivedi had categorically declared that there was no evidence whatsoever to prove that the police had been actively using the services of Nayeem or that they were hand-in-glove with him. He made the declaration in his counter-affidavit submitted to the High Court in December last year. He also claimed reports that the cops had paid Nayeem to obtain information about the Maoist movement were false.

The Home Secretary's affidavit was contrary to the claims of senior retired IPS officers including former DGP V Dinesh Reddy and former Special Intelligence Bureau chief Sriram Tiwari. They said that the police department had used Nayeem as an informant to gather vital information on Maoists.