VIJAYAWADA: Investigating the letter dashed off by former State Election Commissioner to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) alleging a threat to his life on the day the Supreme Court delivered its verdict on the conduct of local body elections in the State, the AP Crime Investigation Department (CID) has revealed that the former SEC’s computer was reformatted and all operating systems were changed, giving scope for apprehensions that the letter may have come from “outside”, as alleged by YSRC MP V Vijayasai Reddy in his complaint.
Ramesh Kumar, soon after the Supreme Court upheld the SEC’s decision to put on hold the elections on March 18, wrote to the MHA alleging threat to his life. Later, Vijayasai Reddy filed a complaint with Director General of Police Gautam Sawang, alleging the letter originated from some other “place”, and suspected the involvement of TDP leaders.
CID officials recorded the statement of Assistant Secretary K Samba Murthy during the investigation, and found that the desktop computer was reformatted and the draft of the letter was deleted from the laptop. A pen drive used to copy the letter from one computer to another was damaged. CID Additional DGP PV Sunil Kumar said that a day before the verdict, on March 17, Ramesh Kumar asked Samba Murthy to give him the email address of the MHA.
Secretary reveals evidence was destroyed
Later, Samba Murthy copied the letter onto a pen drive and then on a desktop computer. After printing out the letter, Murthy got it signed by Ramesh Kumar. “The signed letter was scanned and uploaded onto the desktop. It was later sent to Ramesh Kumar via WhatsApp web,” Sunil Kumar said, adding that Murthy told them the former SEC might have copied it from WhatsApp and mailed it to the MHA through his smartphone.
However, when the CID officials asked the assistant secretary to show the letter on his laptop, he said it had been deleted. “Meanwhile, several official communications were intact on the computer, though this particular letter was deleted; and the assistant secretary has no answer as to why,” Sunil Kumar said. Murthy also told the investigators the pen drive was damaged by him. “All this (deleted letter from laptop, damaging the pen drive) gives impetus to the complaint of the MP (Vijayasai Reddy) and we cannot say the letter did not originate from some other source.
If the copy of the letter was on the computer, we could say the letter originated from the SEC office and at what time it was typed,” Sunil Kumar said. With the tampering of evidence, we cannot rule out the possibility of the letter originating from some other place. “Now, there is a doubt on the origin of the letter,” he contended. Sunil Kumar said they are in the process of establishing why all the evidence in the laptop and desktop computer related to the letter was destroyed and the systems reformatted.
“We will retrieve data from the desktop using cyber tools and locate the origin of the letter.”Kumar also said a case has been registered on charges of tampering with the evidence. The letter to the Centre had the number 221 on top, which was also interestingly there on the reference letter given to Telugu Desam MLC P Ashok Babu. ‘’We are also examining the numbers on this particular matter as to how these two letters had the same number on them,’’ he said.
‘Ramesh Kumar already had the draft’
“After the SC verdict was out, Ramesh Kumar called Murthy to his cabin... He had a draft of the letter, and dictated it while Murthy typed it out on the laptop,” said the CID