Court allows CBI plea to send Viveka 'letter' to forensic lab

HYDERABAD: Principal special judge of CBI courts in Hyderabad, Ch Ramesh Babu, on Wednesday allowed a petition of CBI and permitted it to send the alleged last letter written by AP former minister YS Vivekananda Reddy to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Delhi, for conducting a ninhydrin test on it.
The judge directed the CBI to produce the original letter before the court and obtain the required number of certified copies of the same and substitute them as secondary evidence in place of the original letter.

Ninhydrin test is a chemical test useful to identify ammonia, primary/secondary amines or amino acids.
The letter was found on the body of the former minister on March 15, 2019, the day he was brutally murdered at his Pulivendula residence in AP's Kadapa district.
The forensic science lab had last year examined the letter and said the letter was written under coercion. Now, the CBI wants to know through a ninhydrin test traces of the accused on this letter.
The accused have been opposing the request of the CBI on several grounds. The letter, a key exhibit that serves as a piece of evidence, would be damaged and may even get defaced if chemicals are applied to it for the purpose of conducting a ninhydrin test.
The CBI took note of this problem and requested the court to take copies of the letter and allow them to use the copy as evidence at the trial if the original is damaged.