Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajaskhara Reddy’s widow and Pulivendula MLA Vijayamma on Saturday shot a five-page letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh, seeking to ensure that genuine political dissent was not hounded.
Dubbing the ongoing CBI investigation against her son and Kadapa MP Jaganmohan Reddy a clear case of witch-hunting and political vendetta, she said the massive raids unleashed on the houses and offices of the latter and the persons associated with him were aimed at terrorising and demoralising his party cadre.
She listed earlier controversies such as the Bofors episode and the recent Adarsh scam, among others, to question as to why, at that time, the CBI had not raided the houses of Sonia Gandhi and then Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan for collecting incriminating evidence. Why only her family was being subjected to this kind of humiliation, she asked.
She sought to compare the treatment meted out to Anna Hazare early this week and the ordering of CBI probe against her son, saying both instances showed the Congress leadership’s intolerance towards genuine dissent.