Ayesha murder: HC wants CBI to probe proof erosion

HYDERABAD: Shocked at the revelation of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that the trial court at Vijayawada had destroyed the records and material objects pertaining to the decade-old murder case of Vijayawada-based B Pharmacy student Ayesha Meera, the Hyderabad high court on Friday ordered a probe by the HC Registrar General. The Hyderabad High Court also made CBI a party to the case on its own and issued the premier investigating agency a notice asking it to come on board.

“Destroying records even when the appeal was still being heard in 2014 is a serious matter. The state should pack off the case to CBI. Time has come to take away this case from the AP police and hand it over to CBI,” said a Bench of Chief Justice TB Radhakrishnan and Justice SV Bhatt, which was monitoring the SIT probe. When the case came up for hearing, the SIT counsel briefed the bench about the status of the probe and it was then that the issue of destruction of records and material objects came to the fore.



Raising doubts about the role played by officials from courts, right from the trial court to the High Court, the Chief Justice asked the HC Registrar General to probe all aspects of the case and furnish a report within four weeks.

The Bench posed a series of questions to AP special counsel Krishna Prakash on the sequence of events in the case, right from the ghastly murder of Ayesha in December 2007.

The police initially implicated an innocent person called Satyam Babu in the case and the trial court in Vijayawada sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2010. Later, HC heard an appeal against this order, acquitted him in March 2017 and ordered a reprobe by SIT.

Directing the HC Registrar General to swing into action, the Bench said: “We have to protect the purity of the judicial process and find out who is responsible for this seemingly wanton destruction of records. Find out whether there was undue haste on the part of our system to destroy the records. Keep track of the journey of the case record from lower court to HC.”