Activist and senior advocate Bojja Tharakam passed away in Hyderabad on Friday, after suffering from a brief illness at the age of 77.
Reports suggest that Bojja was fighting a brain tumour since 2008.
Known best for his fight against oppression and for the rights of Dalits, Bojja resigned his position as special prosecutor in the Andhra Pradesh High Court to protest against the violence on Dalits in Andhra's Karmchedu in 1984 .
The New Indian Express reported:
As an advocate, he filed a case in Supreme Court against police encounters with a demand that cases should be booked against officers involved in encounters and investigate them. He won the case in the Supreme Court. Tarakam was popular for his fight against the culprits in the infamous Tsundur massacre of Dalits in Andhra Pradesh in August 1992.
The report also adds that he penned several books on rights movement, which included Police Arrest Cheste, Dalitulu Rajyam and Kulam Vargam.
He was also known for starting the Ambedkar Yuva Jana Maha Sangham in 1972 in erstwhile Andhra, to take up cases of discrimination.
Paying his condolences, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said that although Bojja was a native of Andhra, he fought for the Telangana movement and had devoted his life for the cause of Dalits and backward communities.