Banana plantations set afire in 6 capital region villages

Guntur police begin probe; TDP, YSRC leaders trade charges. Dog squads have been dispatched to the villages after Director General of Police J.V Ramudu directed the Superintendents of Police -- Rajesh Kumar and P.H.D. Ramakrishna -- to investigate and bring the guilty to the book.

Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy takes a look at the damage to Banana plantations at Tadepalli mandal on Monday caused by a mysterious fire. Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

Special police teams from Guntur Rural and Guntur Urban have launched a massive operation to crack the mystery behind the fire which destroyed banana plantations and farm implements in about six villages abutting River Krishna in the district. Preliminary estimates put the loss around Rs.5 to 6 lakh.

Unidentified miscreants set ablaze banana plantations, bundles of logs, haystacks and plastic pipes used in drip irrigation at the farmlands in six villages in Thullur and Tadepalli mandals, constituting the proposed capital region. Given that the miscreants chose to burn combustible materials like logs, plastic pipes which could help the fire spread quickly, the policed suspect a conspiracy.

The incident coming in the backdrop of spirited resistance by farmers of river side villages to land pooling for the proposed capital region stoked a political controversy with both the ruling Telugu Desam government and the YSR Congress blaming one another.

CM seeks report Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu who reviewed the situation with Ministers in Hyderabad, instructed Inspector General of Police (Guntur) P.V Sunil Kumar and Collector Kantilal Dande to probe the incident and submit a report.

Ministers Prathipati Pulla Rao and Ravela Kishore Babu visited the affected villages and blamed YSRC president Y.S Jaganmohan Reddy for the incident alleging that he did not want the capital to come in Krishna-Guntur region. YSRC leaders Ambati Rambabu and K. Pardhasaradhi launched a counter attack accusing the government of engineering the fire mishaps to create a scare among farmers and coerce them into parting with their lands.

Dog squads have been dispatched to the villages after Director General of Police J.V Ramudu directed the Superintendents of Police -- Rajesh Kumar and P.H.D. Ramakrishna -- to investigate and bring the guilty to the book. Farmers noticed the blaze at Rayapudi at around 6 a.m. on Monday. Similar incidents were reported in other villages too. “I saw a blaze in my farm at about 6 a.m. I rushed and saw a bundle of logs on fire. A small hut in which I used to store plastic pipes used for drip irrigation and other farm implements were also set on fire. I bought the wooden logs used for supporting banana plantations for Rs.1.5 lakh,” said G. Srinivas, a farmer owning five acres of banana plantations at Rayapudi.