After the attacks came false cases foisted on Telugu Desam Party leaders. Guntur urban district police in Andhra Pradesh registered an FIR against MLA Nara Lokesh Naidu, son of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, and five other leaders, accusing them of attacking a police inspector at the party headquarters at Mangalagiri Tuesday evening. Another FIR was registered late Tuesday night against 70 workers of the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) for allegedly attacking and vandalising the TDP office at Mangalagiri.
This comes at a time when the police inspector was informed of the incident at TDP office but wasn’t threatened or beaten up. After TDP employees informed him of the situation, the police inspector went back and filed a “false case”, alleged TDP karyakartas.
The FIR states that when reserve inspector G Sakru Naik, attached to the AP police headquarters as a spotter, went to the TDP headquarters after it was attacked and vandalised allegedly by YSRCP activists and supporters on Tuesday evening, TDP leaders, including Nara Lokesh Naidu, MLC Ashok Babu, ex-MLAs Alapati Raja, Tenali Sravan Kumar, Pothineni Srinivasa Rao, and some party workers caught hold of him and demanded to know his identity.
The FIR states that they allegedly used foul language with caste slur, punched him and pressed his throat. The injured inspector fell and became unconscious, states the FIR. When he became conscious after some time, he found himself confined in a room and his phone was broken by MLC Ashok Babu, the FIR alleges. He was rescued by the circle inspector of Mangalagiri rural and shifted to hospital. Naik subsequently gave a statement and complained to the police.
The FIR lodged on Tuesday night, also at Mangalagiri rural police station, is based on a complaint by P Sai Badrinath who works as an IT employee at the Knowledge Centre at the TDP office at Mangalagiri. In his complaint, Badrinath stated that around 5:20 pm on October 19, at least 70 YSRCP followers trespassed into the office with deadly weapons and damaged the office furniture and beat up and threatened the TDP staff. Badrinath, in his complaint, said that he also fell unconscious and was shifted to Manipal hospital at Tadepalli along with others.
It is important to note that these cases have been falsely foisted on TDP leaders as part of the plan. How this political turmoil in the state is diverting the major issues and impacting everyone’s life is visible to all. From here on, the path that Andhra Pradesh will choose will define how it will go from bad to worse or even further down the drain.