Making the fourth accused Dastagir in Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy murder case a witness was one of the Himalayan blunders committed by CBI in the investigation and filing of the charge-sheet, said advocate Enuganti Uma Maheshwar Rao on Friday.
He was presenting arguments seeking anticipatory bail for Kadapa MP Y.S. Avinash Reddy in the Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy murder case before Justice M. Laxman of Telangana High Court. The noted criminal lawyer, presenting his contentions for over five hours barring 30-minute break for lunch, raised several legal lacunae in the charge sheet filed by the CBI.
It was strange that CBI had presented three statements of Dastagir confessing to the killing of Vivekananda Reddy in the trial court but never arrested him, he said. Unless the court tendered the accused pardon, the investigators cannot claim him to be a witness, Mr. Rao argued stating that this was a glaring mistake by CBI in the case.
The CBI had re-registered the First Information Report (FIR) issued by the Pulivendula police in the murder case of Vivekananda Reddy case. The local police first issued FIR under Section 174 of Criminal Procedure Code. Eventually, they altered the section of law to section 302 (homicide) of Indian Penal Code. They invoked Section 201 (screening of evidence) of the IPC as well.
For some inexplicable reasons, the CBI authorities invoked Section 302 of the IPC but ignored Section 201 when they re-issued the FIR, the lawyer said, arguing that CBI committed mistakes from initial stages of investigation into the case. It was nearly three years since the probe was assigned to the CBI, billed as premier investigation in the country, in the murder case, but the agency still had not solved the case, he said.
Ironically, without achieving any finality in the probe of the case, they had filed the ‘final report’ (charge sheet) in the case and again filed a supplementary charge sheet. In the evidence or documents gathered so far by the authorities, no clinching evidence could be secured by them against Kadapa MP, Mr. Rao said.
Even in the first charge-sheet, they had not informed the trial courts about the statements which were initially recorded by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the local police. The CBI authorities claimed that Dastagir secured over ₹70 lakh for executing the murder of Vivekananda Reddy. At Dastagir’s instance, they claimed to have recovered ₹46.5 lakh from the locker of one person called Munna.
“What happened to Munna? Why the remaining sum was not recovered? Why Munna was not make accused?” Mr. Uma Maheshwar Rao questioned, stating that CBI had not answered any such questions in its charge sheet. He said that Mr. Avinash Reddy was ready to cooperate with the CBI officials but the latter were deliberately targeting him without any incriminating evidence against him in the murder case.
