Seven years after the brutal murder of Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy alias Suri, a faction leader from Andhra Pradesh’s Rayalaseema region, a local court in Hyderabad on Tuesday sentenced the main accused, Bhanu Kiran, to life imprisonment. The first Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge found Bhanu guilty under Section 302 (Murder) of the IPC and also under the Arms Act.
While another accused, Manmohan Singh, was also awarded a jail term for abetting the crime, the remaining four accused, Subbaiah, Haribabu, Vamshi and Venkataramana, were acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Responding to the judgement, Gangula Bhanumathi, Suri’s wife, told reporters that she was not satisfied with the verdict and demanded capital punishment for the main accused.
The crime
Suri was shot and killed, allegedly by Bhanu Kiran, in a moving car in Hyderabad on January 4, 2011. Bhanu, who was sitting in the car’s back seat, allegedly shot Suri from behind with a 0.32 revolver, which made the car driver one of the key witnesses in the case.
Bhanu then, with the help of the other accused in the case, got on a motorbike and sped away. He was arrested in 2012 in Zaheerabad, now in Telangana.
The CID has named half a dozen people in its chargesheet and said that 92 witnesses were examined. In May this year, a local court in Hyderabad sentenced Bhanu Kiran and three others to one year of imprisonment for illegal possession of firearms.
According to reports, the prosecution is relying on three key pieces of evidence; a statement from Suri’s car driver, a forensic report of the murder weapon which was said to be recovered from Bhanu Kiran and communication between the main accused and the others while hatching the plan, in the form of phone calls and SMSs.
Faction feud
The feud between the families of gangster-turned-politicians Paritala Ravindra and Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy alias Maddelachervu Suri was a long standing one. Dozens of people were killed in the rivalry between the two families, which began when Suri’s father Gangula Narayana Reddy allegedly got his rival P Sriramulu killed. The latter’s son, Ravi, took revenge by eliminating Narayana Reddy, several of his aides and family members.
Ravi allegedly tried to kill Suri through a television bomb in 1993. Suri was not at home but five of his relatives were killed. Suri retaliated with a car bomb blast at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad in 1997. Though Ravi escaped unhurt, 26 people were killed and many were injured in the bomb blast.
Suri, who was sentenced to life in the blast case, continued to call the shots even from the confines of his cell and allegedly got many rivals, including Ravi, killed through his aides. Ravi, a former minister, was gunned down in Anantapur town on January 24, 2005.
Suri was released after the government granted remission on grounds of good conduct. However, he was shot and killed in 2011, allegedly by followers of Ravi, as he was returning home after meeting a lawyer.
At the time of his death, the police said that Suri was staying in an apartment in Madhapur and was also allegedly involved in several land deals and settlements in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Vijayawada.
Raktacharitra, a multilingual movie released in 2010, was based on the bloody feud between the families of Paritala Ravindra and Maddelacheruvu Suri in the turbulent Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh.