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Veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Samineni Ramarao was brutally murdered by three unidentified persons in Telangana’s Khammam district on the morning of Friday, October 31. The killers reportedly attacked him with knives at his residence in the Patharlapadu village of Madhira Assembly constituency’s Chinthakani mandal, when he was about to go for his morning walk.
They slit his throat, killing him on the spot, The Hindu reported.
Samineni Ramarao was a veteran farmers' leader. He was a former state committee member of the CPI(M), and the general secretary of the CPI (M)-affiliated Rythu Sangham in the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemned the murder, alleging that it was orchestrated by Congress leaders. Expressing condolences to Samineni Ramarao’s family, the party demanded immediate action from the state Congress government led by Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to apprehend the assailants.
Deputy CM Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, who represents the Madhira constituency, issued a statement expressing condolences to the family and assuring that the perpetrators would be caught.
In the 2023 Assembly elections, CPI(M) refused to join an alliance with Congress over seat-sharing disagreements. The Communist Party of India (CPI) contested in alliance with the Congress and was allocated the Kothagudem segment, which is part of the Khammam Lok Sabha segment, which it won.
Earlier in 2022, Khammam witnessed another political murder when Tammineni Krishnaiah, a relative of CPI(M) state secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram, was killed in broad daylight. Krishnaiah had shifted his allegiance from CPI(M) to the ruling TRS before his murder.
Assailants attacked him with hunting sickles, axes and knives, and left him to bleed to death. Police said Krishnaiah was killed over a turf war between the CPI(M) and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) (now BRS).