YS Vivekananda Reddy case: Jagan fails to order probe he wanted

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.

The volte-face is embarrassing and begs several questions because when he was in the opposition, Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy had demanded a CBI investigation into the murder of his uncle, as did Sunitha Reddy, daughter of the murdered leader.

Reason for u-turn: the YSR Congress is wary of a CBI probe, given that it is probable that the murderer might turn out to someone associated with their party, which would end up in a hunt of its leaders by the CBI.

As for the TD, which was in power when the murder took place, the yellow party too had shied away from ordering a CBI probe as it was in a fix, because it was equally wary of the other probability – what if the probe revealed the murderer to be a TD member.

On Tuesday, K. Srinivasulu Reddy, one of the suspects in the case, was found dead in suspicious circumustances, though it was reported that he had “ended his life”, allegedly due to harassment by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was formed to probe the case.

Government sources told Deccan Chronicle that though YSRC was in a double-mind over whether or not to write to the Centre to take over the Vivekananda Reddy murder investigation, think-tanks within the party cautioned their leader that the “Central Bureau of Investigation  probe could go anywhere” depending on political equations between the YSRC and the BJP in future.