Volume 1, No. 2, April 2000

Madhava Reddy, the Panchayati Raj Minister of AP, was one of the most notorious tyrants the state of Andhra Pradesh had ever seen. During his tenure as the Home Minister of AP between 1995-99, he had proved himself to be even more ruthless and oppressive than most of his counterparts under the infamous dictatorial regimes in countries of Latin America such as Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and so on, and in the Philippines, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere. He was the man who executed the repressive policies of the Telugu Desam (TDP) government drawn up by the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu under the guidance of the World Bank and the various imperialist powers. He was the second most important man in the TDP cabinet, next only to the chief minister. He served as the convenor of the inter-state coordination committee that oversaw the coordination of police operations of the five states of AP, MP, Maharashtra, Orissa and Bihar in suppressing the revolutionary movement led by the CPI (ML)[People’s War]. Elected as MLA from Bhongir four times since 1985, he served as the General Secretary of the TDP and also as the home minister for a brief period in the former chief minister NT Rama Rao’s cabinet in 1989.

Ever since he had joined the TDP 15 years ago, he had been in the forefront in chalking out policies for suppressing the People’s War in AP and in actively executing them.

In Just five years, when he served as the home minister, he organised the murder of almost 1000 people in AP most of whom were leaders and activists of the CPI (ML)[PW] or its mass organisations. Hailing from Nalgonda district of South Telangana where the revolutionary movement was growing by leaps and bounds since the late 1980s, he took it as his special task to suppress the movement there both by overt and covert means. As a faithful dog of the ruling classes, he incessantly barked that he will finish off the revolutionary movement in AP, and the CPI (ML)[PW] within a few months. Under imperialist tutelage, he organised cowardly covert operations by converting some weak elements in the party into police agents and used them to murder fellow comrades and leaders. In North Telangana, Com. Malkapuram Bhaskar (Ramesh — a member of the SZC became a victim of this covert operation when one agent — Jadala Nagaraju — employed by the police under direct guidance of the home minister, shot him at the dead of the night when he was fast asleep. In Nalgonda district, a squad member of Krishnapatti squad, Somla Naik (who was later annihilated by the people), was used for murdering the squad commander and a few other squad members, though the more sinister plan to murder the state leadership did not succeed.

This notorious despot was directly responsible for all the deaths of revolutionaries during the TDP rule since 1995 when Chandrababu came to power after backstabbing the then chief minister NT Rama Rao. Besides, several thousand revolutionaries were arrested and tortured during this period; Goondas and policemen in civil uniforms were sent as killer squads to eliminate legal supporters of the revolutionary movement and civil liberties activists such as the attack on the ballad singer Gaddar and on the APCLC leader Purushottam. Under the regime of Naidu and Reddy, AP was transformed into a killing field.

As history had proved time and again, all tyrants are bound to meet their ultimate doom at the hands of the people. And in Andhra Pradesh, history had witnessed this once again when the armed guerillas of the CPI (ML)[PW] annihilated this notorious enemy on March 7, 2000. He had maximum security which is generally provided to VVIPs — the Z plus category — that provides a bullet-proof car, a pilot car, another car with ten gunmen armed with automatic weapons, a personal security officer handpicked from the best of the police cadre and continuous radio links between the three vehicles, and so on. And during his visit to his native district of Nalgonda, he was provided with an additional escort of two van-loads of specially-trained policemen. But none of these high security measures could save this despot from the wrath of the guerrillas. The minister, his personal security officer, inspector Rambhoopal Reddy, and the policeman driving the car died instantly. The gunmen belonging to the elite anti-Naxalite Grey Hounds force, became so panicky that they continued to fire aimlessly into thin air and just missed hitting the local policemen who were proceeding to the site of the blast.

The annihilation of the notorious despot Madhav Reddy sent shivers down the spine of the Chief Minister Naidu, the State Cabinet, top police brass of AP and the entire Indian ruling classes. It was only a day before — on March 6 — that the Centre held the sixth meeting of the coordination centre, comprising the police chiefs of AP, MP, Bihar, Maharashtra and Orissa as well as home ministry officials. The Union Home Secretary Kamal Pande announced a set of measures, such as : use of unmanned aerial vehicles for aerial reconnaissance of the Naxalite-dominated areas; providing "all resources for the proper training of the police forces"; providing Indian Reserve Battalions — one each for the five states — to begin with; additional funds for modernising the police force; intelligence sharing and so on. The Centre also warned the five states to maintain utmost vigil against surprise attacks from militant outfits. The very next morning after the annihilation of Madhav Reddy, the Union Home Minister — the Hindu fascist LK Advani — the Lok Sabha Speaker, GM Balayogi and several MPs from Delhi flew to Hyderabad to attend the cremation ceremony of Madhav Reddy. True to their class nature, all political parties — the Congress, Janata Dal, CPI, CPI(M) and the various constituents of the BJP-led NDA coalition at the centre — lamented the killing saying that there is no place for violence in "democracy". They tried to hush up the fact that this annihilation was a retaliation to the murder of a thousand revolutionaries and particularly the brutal killing of three top leaders of the CPI (ML)[PW] — Comrades Shyam, Mahesh and Murali — on December 1st, 1999. The media praised the ‘great’ service rendered by this despot in "courageously confronting" the CPI (ML)[PW] and inflicting "severe losses" to the ongoing people’s war. Eenadu, the mouthpiece of the TDP and a staunch votary of the neo-liberal policies of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation pursued most vigorously by Naidu’s TDP at the dictates of the imperialists, launched vicious attacks on the People’s War. (See box). For several days, it filled its papers glorifying the despot Madhav Reddy and suggesting the harshest measures to brutally crush the revolutionary movement.

For Advani, Naidu, the revisionists and other ruling class representatives, the killing of Madhav Reddy seemed as a cowardly act. But for the revolutionary forces and the oppressed people of AP and India at large, this was a heroic deed, a daring action carried out in the midst of the white terror unleashed by the Indian ruling classes. It was a brave act of retaliation for the countless crimes committed by this notorious executioner. It was a repayment of the blood debt owed to the revolutionaries by the class enemies. It was a great tribute paid to the hundreds of beloved martyrs who had laid down their lives for advancing the Indian revolution. When General Dyer was killed, the whole of British India celebrated while the British colonialists went into mourning. When the Andhra Dyer is killed, the Indian ruling classes are grief-stuck (the AP government declared a day’s holiday and three days of mourning) while the people celebrated the event by distributing sweets.

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