YSR Congress Party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday accused a person allegedly associated with Andhra Pradesh’s ruling Telugu Desam Party of killing his party’s worker in the Palnadu district on Wednesday.
The state’s Opposition party also shared a purported video of the alleged incident showing the victim, Sheikh Rashid, being assaulted by a man who has been identified as Sheikh Jilani, reported The Indian Express.
The assault took place on a road near the Mandlamandi bus station. Jilani continued to strike Rashid with a knife even after he fell to the ground. Rashid was bleeding profusely, the newspaper reported.
“Within a month and a half of the new government taking office, Andhra Pradesh has become synonymous with murder, rape, political vendetta, and destruction,” Reddy alleged in a social media post. “Yesterday’s heinous murder in Vinukonda is an example of this. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister [N Chandrababu Naidu] and other responsible officials are promoting such atrocities with clear political malice.”
The former chief minister also urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to address the “deteriorating law and order situation” in the southern state.
“I express my deepest condolences to the family of Rasheed, who was hacked to death by those associated with the TDP in Vinukonda,” Reddy said.
YSR Congress Party leader Sajjala Bharghava Reddy had also claimed that the accused was a member of the Telugu Desam Party and that the murder was the result of political rivalry, The Indian Express reported.
However, unidentified police officers told The Indian Express that the attack on Rashid took place over a failed real estate deal.
“They knew each other and had a fallout over some personal issues,” Palnadu Superintendent of Police K Srinivasa Rao told the newspaper. “We have started a thorough investigation.”
Telugu Desam Party MLC Deepak Reddy also claimed it was a dispute between two friends and that both individuals belonged to YSR Congress Party. “YSRCP is falsely putting allegation that TDP has something to do with it [the incident],” he told ANI.
Soon after coming to power last month, the Naidu-led National Democratic Alliance government in the state had demolished an under-construction central office of the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party in Guntur district.
In response, Reddy accused Naidu of playing vendetta politics.
On June 12, Naidu was sworn in as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh after his Telugu Desam Party along with its allies the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Jana Sena Party won the Assembly elections.
The Telugu Desam Party won 135 out of the state’s 175 Assembly seats. The Jana Sena Party won 21 seats and the BJP clinched eight. Reddy’s YSR Congress Party won 11 seats.
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