TDP leader brutally murdered in Guntur, Nara Lokesh blames YSRCP

Guntur: Gundlapadu village Telugu Desam Party president Thota Chandraiah was brutally murdered near his residence on Thursday. Chandraiah was on his way to his field when some people pounced on him and hit him with sticks and bricks, killing him.

Tension prevailed in the village as TDP activists prevented the police from shifting Chandraiah's body to the Government General Hospital (GGH) for post-mortem, insisting that the body not be moved till Julakanti Brahma Reddy came to the village. However, the police pacified them and shifted the body to the government hospital in Macherla.

Meanwhile, TDP national president and former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, party state president K. Atchannaidu, former ministers Prathipati Pulla Rao, Devineni Umamaheshwara Rao, and Nakka Ananda Babu, and former MLAs Yarapathineni Srinivasa Rao, Kuliphalla Narendra, and T. Shrevan Kumar visited Macherla and paid tributes to the slain TDP leader and consoled the bereaved family.

Relatives of the deceased, TDP leaders, and activists gathered in large numbers at the Macherla Government General Hospital. Mr. Naidu and party national general secretary Nara Lokesh condemned the murder of Chandraiah. Lokesh said the general public and the Opposition leaders were not safe ever since the heir to "murder politics" had become the Chief Minister of the state in 2019. He alleged that the ruling YSRCP faction had killed Chandraiah who had been raising his voice against the ruling party's atrocities.

Meanwhile, YSRCP Macherla MLA Pinnelli Rama Krishna Reddy said the YSRCP had nothing to do with the murder. He said the party leaders were not involved and added that personal enmity might be the reason for the murder. He appealed to the police to arrest the accused at the earliest.