Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president and Nalgonda MP N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has alleged that top TRS leadership was behind the murder of the lawyer couple Gattu Vaman Rao and Nagamani and also questioned the silence of the Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao in condemning the brutal daylight killings.
He suspected the involvement of TRS-backed sand mafia behind the murder and now they were resorting to daylight murders to create a fear psychosis. Speaking to reporters here, he said the Congress party would meet Chief Justice of Telangana High Court Hima Kohli and also write a letter to Chief Justice of Supreme Court S.A. Bobde seeking a CBI enquiry on the murder.
The TPCC chief claimed that the lawyer couple was murdered to cover up a lock-up death of a Dalit, Sheelam Rangaiah in Manthani. Rangaiah was allegedly killed due to third-degree torture by the Manthani Police on May 26, 2020. Advocate Nagamani wrote an email to the Chief Justice alleging that Rangaiah died due to custodial torture.
The letter was treated as Public Interest Litigation by the High Court and on May 27, 2020, and directed Hyderabad Police Commissioner M. Anjani Kumar to personally investigate the case and he submitted a report before the High Court on June 19, 2020. Since the report was confidential, the High Court permitted Nagamani to take the notes from the report to file her counter to the said report.
Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the then Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy, in their order dated September 11,2020, mentioned that Nagamani had complained that she and her husband was being constantly harassed by the police, both at Manthani, which is their native place and in Hyderabad.
The TPCC chief reminded that Nagamani had charged the police with implicating them in false cases apart from threat calls by the Police Department to withdraw the lockup death case. He said the lawyer couple had also filed several cases against TRS party's Peddapalli Zilla Parishad chairman Putta Madhukar and also ineligibility case against Manthani municipal chairperson Putta Shailaja, wife of Madhukar. These facts clearly show that the murders were politically motivated to silence the whistle-blowers. He also alleged that the Ramagundam Police Commissioner, Satyanarayana was behaving like a TRS worker.
