The haste in arresting mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy by CBI has been explained. According to the CBI, Gali Janardhan Reddy was planning to flee the country with his wife Lakshmi Aruna when the agency caught up with him in Bellary on September 5. Sources said that Gali had got wind of the fact that CBI would call him for questioning and his hasty move was to avoid the agency cops.

According to the case diary submitted to the CBI Special Court, CBI also got information that the mining baron was planning to scoot and landed in Bellary. Given the rush situation, they could not move the designated court for a search warrant. However, to avoid an illegality, they took the district SP of Bellary into confidence and told him that they would use Section 165 of Criminal Procedure Code of the IPC to search Gali's premises. The SP also provided the CBI team with a local force and CBI officials themselves brought two circle inspectors from Bangalore - familiar with the terrain - to avoid local trouble.

The case diary also details that the sleuths knocked at Gali's doors at 6 am and took him by surprise. They also started questioning him about his illegal mining activities, but no answers were forthcoming. At this point, the team started searching his house and this led to recovery of large quantity of cash, gold and jewelery. The search over an arrest memo was served on Gali and the contents explained both to him and wife, the CBI case diary says. At 6.30 am, the CBI team went to the house of Sreenivasa Reddy, brother-in-law of Gali and repeated the same sequence before arresting him.

Interestingly, the case diary also mentions how a manager of the OMC spoke at length with CBI sleuths and gave the agency detailed information about the goings on. On Wednesday, CBI also interrogated Gali who is now in their custody at length countering him all the information that the agency has gathered from the manager. The interrogation is likely to continue tomorrow. Gali has permission to have two of his lawyers with him during questioning. CBI sleuths were tight-lipped about details of the questioning.