Hyderabad: Anti-Corruption Bureau court, Hyderabad, special judge N Victor Immanuel on Monday directed authorities to investigate the complaint against Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in the cash-for-vote scandal that rocked Telangana in 2015.
On May 31 last year, TDP legislator A Revanth Reddy and two others, Bishop Sebastian Harry and Uday Simha, were arrested by ACB while allegedly paying a bribe of Rs 50 lakh to nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson seeking his support for TDP nominee Vem Narendar Reddy in the Legislative Council elections.
ACB later furnished in court details about an alleged telephonic conversation Naidu had with Stephenson 'assuring' the latter that he would "honour the commitments and promises made by his men for securing the vote".
Dealing with a complaint filed by Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, the YSRCP MLA from Mangalagiri in Guntur district, who charged the Telangana state machinery, particularly the ACB, with failure in taking the investigation in the case to a logical conclusion, the judge directed the director general of ACB to probe the case and furnish a report to the court by September 29.
ACB had registered a case against Revanth Reddy and others, filed a chargesheet that extensively referred to the name of Naidu, and assured the court that it would come out with an additional chargesheet soon. It did not name Naidu as an accused in its first chargesheet.
The YSRCP MLA in his complaint urged the court to include Naidu as an accused in the case. He claimed that he got the voice samples of Naidu in the telephonic conversation he had with Stephenson and one from his speech delivered at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, verified through a independent scientific agency, which concluded that both samples belonged to the AP chief minister.
He had even cited Seema Kotalwar, a scientist at Digital Forensic Science Department, Helik Advisory Ltd, Mumbai, as a witness to the case along with Elvis Stephenson, his daughter Jessica Stephenson, his friend Malcolm Taylor.