Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Friday asked the Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Women’s Commission to resign. The chairperson Renuka Reddy was caught on camera by a local TV channel demanding a bribe of Rs 50,000 to help a woman who sought the commission’s intervention.

She took Rs 5000 in cash after a woman reporter, posing as a victim, promised to get the rest of the amount later in the evening. A dance teacher in a private school went to the Women’s Commission claiming to have been abandoned by her husband. The two had married in a temple without the permission of the groom’s family, after a brief love affair. But after the marriage, the groom was pressurised by his family into saying that he had married her as she threatened to commit suicide. When the victim approached the Women’s Commission to restore her rights, the chairperson’s personal assistant Devayani asked her to get Rs 40,000 as “fee” if she wanted the chairperson to intervene.

She told the victim that the chairperson had been “successfully settling” cases for the last three years as a member of the commission. The victim then approached a Telugu TV news channel which sent out a team of reporters posing as the victim’s kin.

Ms Reddy agreed to meet them at her home and assured them that the husband would return to his wife. When asked if she might go over to the other side if they offered her more money, she said she was a supporter of the women’s cause and would not let them down even if she were offered Rs 10 lakhs. When a reporter offered her Rs 5000, the chairperson said she does not deal with “small amounts” and that she would take the entire amount at one go. However, she relented after some persuasion and the promise that the rest of the amount would be paid up by evening.

Meanwhile, an enraged chief minister is reported to have asked a senior official to enquire into the goings-on in the commission and asked Ms Reddy to resign.