The CBI has arrested five people for allegedly posting defamatory content against judges of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court on social media, officials said on Sunday.

The role of a Lok Sabha member, Nandigam Suresh, and Amanchi Krishna Mohan, both of the YSR Congress, are under scanner in the case, and both have been examined by the agency in its effort to unearth a larger conspiracy, they said.

“To investigate the larger conspiracy, the CBI has also examined certain persons, including an MP and an ex-MLA, and also continued investigation into the role of other persons who were not mentioned in the FIR,” CBI spokesperson R C Joshi said.

The agency had on Saturday arrested two people — Pattapu Aadarsh and Lavanuru Samba Siva Reddy — from Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, the CBI had arrested Dhami Reddy Konda Reddy and Pamula Sudheer on July 28, while Lingareddy Rajasekhar Reddy, who was residing in Kuwait, was arrested on July 9 when he landed in India, the officials said. “The agency was monitoring his movements. The moment he landed in India, the officers took him into their custody”, an official said.

The arrests were made by the CBI in the case in which it had booked 16 individuals for allegedly posting defamatory content against the judges.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court had directed the agency to probe the case and submit a report to it in a sealed cover.

“It was alleged that the accused, by intentionally targeting the judiciary, made derogatory posts on social media platforms against judges and judiciary, following some court verdicts delivered by the judges of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh,” Joshi said. After registration of the case, the CBI traced 13 of the 16 accused named in the FIR on various digital platforms, he said.

“Action was also initiated by CBI, after it had registered this case to get objectionable posts removed from the social media platforms, public domains and a lot of such posts or accounts were removed from the internet,” Joshi said.

Taking cognizance of the alleged defamatory posts, the high court had directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the role of prominent persons in the southern state who were intentionally targeting Supreme Court and high court judges.

The CJI said though judges complain to the chief justice or the head of the district concerned, when they complain to the police, the CBI or others, these agencies do not respond.

“They think it is not a priority item for them. The IB, CBI they are not helping the judiciary at all. I am making this statement with a sense of responsibility and I know the incident that is the reason I am saying this. I do not want to divulge more than this,” the CJI had said while hearing a suo motu case on the issue of safeguarding courts and protecting judges in the wake of a recent incident of the alleged mowing down of a judge in Dhanbad.