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Naidu's voice may face Telangana ACB test

Hyderabad - The cops are likely to make the move following submission of a report by the State Forensic Science Laboratory confirming that the voices of the three accused TDP leaders.

In what could turn out to be a source of embarrassment for Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, the Telangana Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) is likely to seek his voice sample for test in connection with the cash-for-vote scam involving lawmakers from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
The cops are likely to make the move following submission of a report by the State Forensic Science Laboratory confirming that the voices of the three accused TDP leaders, recorded by the ACB, matched with their samples collected from the Legislative Assembly and media channels. The accused include TDP legislators A Revanth Reddy, S Venkata Veeraiah and a party worker Mathias Jeruselam.
The ACB had laid a trap and arrested Revanth Reddy in Hyderabad on May 31 when he was offering an advance of Rs5 million as part of a Rs 50 million bribe to a nominated MLA in Telangana, Elvis Stephenson, to cast his vote in favour of a TDP candidate in the elections to the Telangana Legislative Council.
A week later, an audio tape had surfaced purportedly containing Naidu's conversation with Stephenson, assuring him that "all commitments would be honoured" if he voted in favour of TDP. The scam triggered a bitter political war between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh with the two Telugu states initiating tit-for-tat moves.
Accusing the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government of resorting to illegal phone tapping of TDP leaders, AP had launched investigations and served a notice to T-News, a local vernacular channel partly owned by Telangana chief K Chandrasekhara Rao's family, which first aired the audio tape. It also summoned various telecom companies for a probe and registered cases against the Telangana chief minister under various sections.
On its part, the Telangana ACB filed a charge sheet on July 29 against Revanth Reddy, a deputy floor leader of TDP in Telangana Assembly, and two of his associates.
Following a local court's directive, the Telangana Assembly authorities sent speech copies of the accused TDP MLAs to the State Forensic Laboratory for a voice-matching test. The ACB also procured the copy of an interview given by Jerusalem to a local TV channel and sent it to the lab. Armed with the test results, the ACB is now likely to seek Naidu's voice sample to further pursue the case, sources said.
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