YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) MP YS Avinash Reddy from Kadapa approached the Telangana High Court on Monday for anticipatory bail in former Andhra Pradesh Minister YS Vivekananda Reddy's murder case. A petition for anticipatory bail was filed in the High Court by MP Avinash Reddy hours before he was scheduled to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Hyderabad. Avinash Reddy has pleaded for an urgent hearing of the petition as he is to appear before the CBI officers at 3 p.m. The court has agreed to take it for a hearing after lunch.
On Sunday, Avinash Reddy's father YS Bhaskar Reddy was arrested in the Vivekananda Reddy murder case. In its petition seeking custody of Bhaskar Reddy, the CBI has named Avinash Reddy as a co-accused.
Bhaskar Reddy was arrested two days after police arrested G. Uday Kumar Reddy, a close follower of Avinash Reddy, the nephew of the deceased, who has been questioned by the agency multiple times in recent months, IANS reported.
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The 68-year-old former state minister and former MP was alone at his house when unidentified persons barged in and killed him. He was killed hours before he was to launch the YSR Congress Party's election campaign in Kadapa.
Though three Special Investigation Teams (SITs) conducted the probe, they failed to solve the case. The CBI took over the investigation into the case in 2020 on the direction of the Andhra Pradesh High Court after a plea was filed by Vivekananda Reddy's daughter, Sunitha Reddy, who raised suspicions about some relatives.
The CBI filed a charge sheet in the murder case on October 26, 2021, and followed it up with a supplementary charge sheet on January 31, 2022. In November last year, the Supreme Court transferred the trial to a CBI court in Hyderabad to probe into the larger conspiracy behind the murder.