The fate of YS Jaganmohan Reddy continues to hang fire even as the Kadapa MP completed a neat one year in detention. The CBI had arrested the beleaguered son of late chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy on May 27 last year in connection with the disproportionate assets case registered against him.

The arrest followed three days of intense grilling at the agency’s office in Hyderabad, thus ending months-long speculation and bringing the case to a decisive phase.

But even after a year, the ordeal in incarceration seems to be unending for the prime accused as a plucky CBI and a resolute judiciary stonewalled every desperate attempt by Jagan at securing bail. Since his arrest, the YSR Congress party chief’s counsels have moved half a dozen bail petitions in the CBI special court, stretching all the way till the Supreme Court every time.

The CBI, as directed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court, began its preliminary probe into the case on August 10, 2011. The agency filed the FIR five days later, naming about 74 accused including individuals and business entities.

Starting with Jagan’s close aide Vijaya Sai Reddy, the CBI subsequently arrested businessman and VANPIC chairman Nimmagadda Prasad, IRAS official Brahmananda Reddy and former minister Mopidevi Venkata Ramana before zeroing in on the young Kadapa MP. The case had also seen two other ministers, Dharmana Prasada Rao and Sabitha Indra Reddy, resign as recently as last week after they were named in one of the CBI’s chargesheets.

The premier investigating agency has so far filed five chargesheets on some of the key aspects of the alleged fraud involving quid pro quo deals. At the time of filing its last chargesheet on India Cements’ deals and its investments into Jagan’s firms, the agency told the apex court that the probe is under way in three of the seven primary aspects of the case. It informed the court that chargesheets on these cases would be filed in due course of time.

Jagan’s counsels have strongly contended against this stand of the CBI but to no avail. In fact, the Kadapa MP had hardly received any empathy from the judiciary during all the six times he moved the courts at various levels for bail. Pouring cold water on further hopes of early release, the Supreme Court recently rejected Jagan’s last bail plea.

Convinced with the CBI’s reservations against bail, the apex court extended the deadline for the CBI to complete the investigation into the case till September 31. It also slammed the doors shut on Jagan, asking him to approach the judiciary for bail only after this date. Thus, Jagan is left with the only option of languishing in jail for four more months before he can hope for a fresh attempt at bail.