India - Judicial probe sought into Ganti Prasadam’s killing

Accusing Kiran Kumar Reddy government of engineering the murder of former Maoist leader and revolutionary poet Ganti Prasada Rao alias Prasadam the Praja Sanghala Aikya Vedika demanded the government to order a judicial enquiry by a sitting judge of the High Court into the killing of Ganti Prasadam. Participating in a day-long protest organised at Indira Park on Friday to condemn the killing of Prasadam more than 30 peoples’ organisation representatives condemned the killing and demanded the government to take action against the guilty.
Founder member of Revolutionary Writers’ Association (Virasam) Varavara Rao speaking on the occasion said it was a clear case of state-sponsored killing and was executed by the special police force. “This is not for the first time such a thing has happened. In the past also several leaders were killed in cold blood by the government,’’ he remarked. “Ganti Prasadam is not among us but his spirit would not die and his legacy, which has taken root in the political culture of the Maoist movement in the state, will grow and bear fruits,” he said.
Former chairman of AP Press Academy Potturi Venkateswara Rao, while supporting the demand for judicial enquiry into the killing of Ganti Prasadam, said efforts were being made to revive Committee of Concerned Citizens, constituted under the leadership of retired IAS officer SR Sankaran in 1997, to mediate between the state and the People’s War Group to bring peace in the state. He said the state should refrain from such acts and try to create confidence among the people.
Human rights activist Prof. Haragopal said the government does not want peace in the state and hence it was eliminating leaders like Ganti Prasadam. “The ruling class want people like Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who is responsible for killing of over 2,000 people in his state, and not people like Ganti Prasadam, whom people loved and respected,” he remarked. The state is promoting violence and was trying to suppress the voices of the people, he said and added that such acts of the government will aggravate violence in the state. “From civil liberties activist Dr Ramanatham’s in 1985 to Ganti Prasadam the state was responsible for all the killings. This has to stop,’’ he said.
Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee(APCLC) general secretary B Raghunath said there is a need to take up a mass campaign against such state-sponsored killings. To create fear among the civil societies the government was engineering such killings, he said. People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) Andhra Pradesh unit president Jaya Vindhyala alleged that the government was eliminating all the people who were working for the cause of the people. “We should see that such incidents do not take place in the future and should work in this direction,” she said.