Chandrababu Naidu had formed SIT to probe Vivekananda Reddy’s murder

Hyderabad: Close to six months after senior YSR Congress leader and former Member of Parliament Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy was brutally done to death at his residence in Pulivendula, in Kadapa district, the Andhra Pradesh government led by Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy appears to have developed cold feet when it comes to handing over the murder probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) even as the case is getting murkier by the day.

With the TD appearing to be dialling for a detente with the ruling saffron party again, or at least making desperate efforts for a rapprochement, the YSRC appears to have developed cold feet in taking a firm stand about handing over the probe to the Central agency.

Since the murder took place on March 15, earlier this year, both parties have been mudslinging on each other, even as State police remained clueless about perpetrators. The AP police finds itself under mounting pressure from political bosses to crack the case. The police are in a quandary because they cannot rule out the perpetrators being linked to the ruling YSRC party. They have questioned over a 100 people so far, but are still clueless about the killers.

In the erstwhile TD regime, police were reportedly under pressure, which led sleuths to arrest three people, but they were only suspected to have a role in destruction of evidence but the actual killers were not identified, let alone apprehended.

“There are a lot of theories... lots of them. And in the end, that is all that we have,” a police official said.

Sources say that ever since YSRC stormed to power in May, there have been several rounds of discussions within the party, and with the police top brass, over the way forward to crack the mystery.

Though the high profile murder was used as ammunition by both parties to target each other during the peak of electioneering, Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy back then had demanded a thorough CBI probe, alleging that Chandrababu Naidu was involved in the murder of the 68-year-old YSRC leader.

At the helm, then, Naidu brushed aside Jagan’s demand for CBI probe and instead, formed a SIT comprising Anhdra Pradesh police officials to investigate the case.

The irony is that the YSRC is doing exactly what the TD had done then. Though there are some within the YSRC who feel that handing over the case to the CBI is the only way to get to the truth, they are also fearful that if one of their own ilk was associated with the crime, it would pose an existential question over the party’s reputation, if not its future. And completing the jog around the park for irony, yesterday, within hours after the “suspicious death” of Srinivasulu Reddy, the Telugu Desane demanded a CBI investigation into Vivekananda Reddy’s murder.