The fetch method on a DBI statement handle object returns a reference to an array containing the value, not the value itself (it's an alias for fetchrow_arrayref). You need to do something like:

if ($in{'requestID'} == $newUID->[0])
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Update
I just realized your code snippet says fetchrow, not fetch. To my knowledge, there's no fetchrow method in DBI. If you're not using DBI, ignore this note (what are you using?); if you are, what method are you actually calling?