ACB: Stephenson’s daughter dropped from witness list

Hyderabad: The Anti Corruption Bureau investigating the cash-for-vote scam on Friday informed the

ACB

special court that it is dropping the name of former MLC Elvis Stephenson’s daughter from the list of witnesses. She is currently staying in the US and may not be able to come down due to the pandemic, it said.

Stephenson is the de facto complainant in the ACB case filed against Congress MP A Revanth Reddy and others who are facing charges of trying to bribe Stephenson to get him vote in favour of TDP nominee Vem Narender Reddy in the 2015 MLC elections. Revanth was with the TDP at that time.

Last week, the ACB court recorded the depositions of Stephenson and a few others. Their cross-examination by the accused would be done on May 10.

On May 31, 2015, the ACB laid a trap and caught Revanth and others while they were trying to lure Stephenson with Rs 50 lakh and a promise to give Rs 5 crore more. The TRS leadership came down heavily on TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu, charging him with engineering the conspiracy from behind the screen.

The ACB mentioned in its chargesheet that several TDP functionaries were in touch with their party chief before executing this conspiracy, but did not make him an accused. Revanth made Stephenson speak to Naidu over the phone before handing over the cash.

There were reports in 2015 that the ACB sent the voice sample to the forensic science lab to ascertain the authenticity of the voice. But, nothing much was heard about this after that. The ACB initially said that it could not trace the source of Rs 50 lakh cash. Later, it linked the cash to Vem Narender and his son.