“The supreme sacrifice of our near and dear ones did not go waste and the long cherished dream is ultimately becoming a reality,” is how the families of the youth and students, who ended their lives for the cause of separate Telangana, reacted as the 29 State in the Indian Union is all set to be born after midnight.
Parents and family members of the martyrs’ have sense of pride as they recall the sacrifice of their kith and kin. The first Telangana martyr in the current phase of movement (first phase in 1969) Kasoju Srikantha Chary's mother, Kasoju Shankaramma, says that the responsibility of realising the dreams of the martyrs is in the hands of people of Telangana and political parties with presence in the region.
Take the case of Bolloju Naveen (26), an autodriver, who ended his life by taking poison on July 15, 2010. He left behind wife, Jyotsana, and two children, Soumya and Priyanka. “The young widow is now working as a salesperson in a cloth showroom to take care of the children,” says her father Thota Narayana. The story of Alli Satyanarayana, (45), of Kotagalli is a painful reminder. Father of three daughters, he ended his life after attending a hunger strike camp leaving his family in lurch. His wife Bhoomalaxmi is eking out her livelihood by doing small jobs.
“If I am alive, only my two children will be happy. But if we get separate Telangana, all the youth and children of the region will be happy and live with self-respect,” these were the last words of a constable Kistaiah to his wife Padmavathi before he shot himself with the service revolver in Kamareddy of Nizamabad district on December 1, 2009.
Minutes before he ended his life, Kistaiah climbed a cellular tower and spoke to his wife asking her to “take care of their children and educate them properly as he was committing suicide and said “Jai Telangana” and switched off his phone. “My son would have completed his M.Sc by now,” recalls Darshanala Shivanna of Kuchalapur in Talamadugu mandal, father of 26-year-old-son Santosh, who committed suicide in 2012 at Osmania University in Hyderabad. “His sacrifice has not gone waste,” adds Narsavva, the martyrs’ mother. Enugu Narayan Reddy of Borigaon in Ichoda mandal is also happy over formation of Telangana.
Swaroopa, mother of 25-year-old journalist Miriyalkar Sunil of Warangal waits for the TRS Government to fulfil the dreams of her son of jobs for all youth in Telangana. Moving suicide note
“We have the sad feeling of losing our son and it’s a huge loss for the entire family,” says P.Indrasena Reddy, father of Ishant Reddy, of Basantapur, who committed suicide on OU campus.
“My nephew R Srikanth, of Manikyaram in Yellendu mandal in Khammam, sacrificed his life while pursuing M.Tech for the cause of Telangana on August 6 in 2011,” says Kotaiah of Manikyaram. “Srikanth is not among us now but his suicide note in which he made a fervent appeal to TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao to accomplish the mission of formation of Telangana State is still afresh in our minds,” Kotaiah recalls.
“My son Y Venugopal hanged himself to death unable to bear the inordinate delay in the formation of separate Telangana State in 2011,” deplores Krishna Babu, a tailor of Burhanpuram in Khammam. We are struggling to cope with his loss,” Babu bemoans.
(With additional reporting by S. Harpal Singh (Adilabad), P. Ram Mohan (Nizamabad), K.M.Dayashankar (Karimnagar), R. Avadhani (Sangareddy), Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao (Warangal), T. Karnakar Reddy (Nalgonda) and P. Sridhar (Khammam)
