CBI to investigate Pratyusha's death

hyderabad: bowing down to concerted demand from the entire opposition, the state government has agreed to entrust the investigation of the suspicious death of budding film actress pratyusha to the central bureau of investigation (cbi). the government has also agreed to constitute a special court on the lines of the one constituted in the jubilee hills blast case to expedite the trial and bring the culprits to book.announcing this during a discussion on the issue in the legislative assembly on thursday, chief minister n chandrababu naidu expressed readiness to institute a judicial inquiry into the incident simultaneously as the government was keen on establishing the facts in the case. however, the house decided to have only a cbi probe so that the investigation does not get diluted. naidu said, “the police succeeded in collecting minute-to-minute details of the movement of pratyusha and sidhartha reddy on feb. 24 evening, including telephone calls the couple made, but there is no information about what they spoke. jumping to conclusions at this juncture would not be appropriate,� he said. the chief minister admitted that there were differences between the version of the private hospital in which the couple got admitted, postmortem report of gandhi hospital and the dna report and that it was also not supporting the police on the issue. “the government did not keep silent on the krushi bank issue and succeeded in nabbing k sunita. bank chairman k venkateswara rao will also be nabbed shortly. the same is the case with pratyusha’s death. the investigation may take a little time, but the government will leave no stone unturned to investigate the facts of the case and bring the culprits, if any, to book,� he asserted alleging that the opposition parties instead of helping the government in the investigation were indulging in mudslinging. in his statement, home minister t devender goud said that on the complaint of p r a t y u s h a ’ s mother,s sarojini devi, a case under section 174 of crpc was registered, but was later altered to section 302 following postmortem report which claimed that the cause of death was due to pressure over the neck, asphyxia due to manual strangulation. explaining the sequence of events after the incident, goud said that 30 witnesses, including sidhartha reddy, were examined so far and their statements have been recorded. relevant documents from hospital as well as other material evidence was collected and a panel of senior medical professors was constituted to scrutinise the medical evidence and various reports to give expert opinion on the medicolegal aspects of the case, he said. earlier, opposition members, including leader of the opposition, y s rajasekhara reddy alleged that there were several grey areas in the case which need to be investigated. trs leader k chandrasekhara rao said that the government need not go to prestige on the issue as there were allegations of sons of two ministers being involved in the case. mim floor leader asaduddin owaisi said it was still not clear whether it was suicide or murder. cpm leader n narasimhaiah alleged that efforts were made to tamper evidence like pratyusha’s clothes, which were disposed of by the hospital authorities without surrendering them to the police.