So to simplify lets ignore the database for now and say you have - a bug id, a committers name and an array containing the bug id, a code and a list of developers involved in the code
I assume that you don't want someone who is not assigned the bug committing the code but the reverse is just as easy.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $bug_no = shift;
my $committer = shift;

my @array =("16410 88 bhorwat,  dpotte1,  jbehr,  lgrimes",
"16412 88 pputta1", 
"16413 88 gkothi, aandy");
my %hash;

foreach(@array){
   #remove those commas
   s/,//g;
   #get your bug id and a list of devs
   my ($bug_id,undef,@dev) = split/\s+/,$_;
   foreach(@dev){
       #dont really need data in the hash only the key
      $hash{$bug_id}{$_} = $_;
   }
}
#this can be a loop if you have many bugs and committer combos
if(!defined($hash{$bug_no}{$committer})){
   print "Committer $committer is not assigned to Bug $bug_no";
}
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