High drama was witnessed at the house of former Minister and TDP Politburo member Nakka Ananda Babu when a police team descended from Narsipatnam town in Visakhapatnam district late on October 18 to serve him a notice for his remarks made on ganja smuggling in the State, at a press conference he had addressed in the afternoon.
The former Minister had said that cultivation and smuggling of ganja was rampant in the State and youth were becoming slaves to drugs. He urged the State government and the Centre to initiate effective measures to check the illegal activity.
Tension gripped the area as a large number of TDP cadres rushed to the Minister’s house on knowing about the police presence there and raised slogans against the police and the Chief Minister, demanding that the police leave immediately.
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Mr. Ananda Babu refused to take the notice demanding to know if questioning the government’s failure to check illegal trade of drugs was wrong. The cops however, returned, saying that they would come back on the morning of October 19.
Earlier, TDP leader Dhulipalla Narendra Kumar was also served notice by the Kakinada police for speaking on the drugs issue.
The incident has evoked strong criticism by TDP leaders who called it “harassment of a Dalit leader” for questioning government failure on a key issue like drugs smuggling.
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The party’s national spokesperson K. Pattabhi Ram, at a press conference on the morning of October 19, slammed the YCP Government’s “jungle raj” and criticised the “over-zealous” police who “travelled all the way from Narsipatnam to Guntur to serve notice to Mr. Ananda Babu on the same night. “Despite such swift police teams, cases of rapes and attacks on Dalits are on the rise in the State,” he said sarcastically.
Citing media reports on attacks by ganja smugglers on police teams visiting parts of the state to nab them, the TDP spokesperson dared the YCP government to issue notices on all of them.