Revanth Reddy: Caught on Camera With ₹50 Lakh in 2015, Firewalled From His Own Prosecutors by the Supreme Court, a Contractor the Opposition Calls His and a Judge Who Says He Was Approached, Farmers Reportedly Beaten in Kodangal, Journalists Arrested at Dawn, a Brother's Company With Five Acres of Future City, and "Three Crore Gods" on Tape at a Congress Meeting. The File on Telangana's Chief Minister, Case by Case

Revanth Reddy is the most powerful man in Telangana, and we know of no other sitting Chief Minister whom the Supreme Court has ordered, in writing, not to interfere with a criminal case in which he is the accused. Most people know the 2015 tape. Almost nobody knows what has been built around it since. This file tells eleven cases, each from the beginning, each with its document and its own verdict. Here is what the public record shows, with the dates.

• 31 May 2015. Anti-Corruption Bureau officers walk into a nominated MLA's house in Hyderabad and find Revanth Reddy, then a TDP legislator, with ₹50 lakh in cash. The MLA had reported the offer in advance. The tape runs on every channel. He spends thirty days in jail.
• 16 February 2021. Charges are framed. 27 May 2021. The Enforcement Directorate files a money-laundering complaint naming him first. In eleven years the case has not reached a verdict.
• 20 September 2024. The Supreme Court directs the Chief Minister "not to, in any way, interfere with the functioning of the prosecution", and directs that the head of the ACB "would not report" to him about it. The agency prosecuting him answers to his own Home portfolio.
• October 2025. His lawyers' argument in the Supreme Court is not that he did not pay. It is that paying was not a crime for a bribe-giver in 2015, and that a vote is not an "official act".
• 2024 to 2026. Ten opposition MLAs cross to his party. A Supreme Court judge says in open court that he is making "a mockery of the Tenth Schedule"; the court serves a contempt notice on his Speaker, and in September 2026 the High Court declares one defector disqualified.
• Kodangal, 11 November 2024. Farmers in his own constituency attack officials over land for a pharma village. Fifty-five are arrested. The National Human Rights Commission takes up their complaint and sends a team. Its findings, as the press carried them in April 2025, are that villagers were beaten in a police station and that minors and people who were not even present were booked. His son-in-law is a director of a pharma company that, the opposition says, wanted land there.
• The family. A brother's aerospace company, incorporated with ₹1 lakh and no employees, gets five acres of Future City for ₹7 crore. Another brother's company, sixteen days old, signs a ₹1,000 crore MoU with his government. The opposition says a brother-in-law's firm got an ₹1,137 crore water contract, and the government has not answered. The minister who denied the first link was contradicted by the brother's own LinkedIn.
• The contractor the opposition calls his. A Hyderabad contractor, KLSR Infratech, is admitted to insolvency in 2023 on a supplier's petition, and the appeal tribunal stays the process four days later. The opposition says the firm is the Chief Minister's and has won state contracts worth ₹2,500 to ₹6,000 crore, including in Kodangal. A tribunal judge recuses himself, saying "one of the most revered members of the higher judiciary" approached him for an order in favour of one party. He does not say which. The Supreme Court is reported to have ordered an inquiry. In March 2026 the insolvency is set aside, the tribunal finding that the supplier's claim rested on invoices a tax assessment had found fictitious.
• The gods. In December 2025, on tape at a Congress meeting, in Telugu, in our translation from the recording: "Are there three crores? … For the one who does not marry, there is Hanuman. … For those who drink liquor, there is a god. Yellamma, Pochamma, Maisamma. They are there for those who say toddy must be poured and a chicken must be cut." He says his point was that the Congress, like Hinduism, has room for every kind of person, and that the BJP edited his words. In September 2026, in Delhi, in Hindi: Shiva is the god of poor people, Ram the god of rich people. In April 2024, asked whether Udhayanidhi Stalin should be punished for his words on Sanatana Dharma, he had answered: certainly, why not.

Then the honest part. Not one of these is a conviction. Some are court findings, some are agency filings, some are the opposition's claims resting on documents we name. The file inside places every one of them in its column, and ends with twelve questions, to twelve addresses in Telangana and Delhi, that nobody has made him answer.