Cong. leader's body found near railway crossing

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, OCT. 24. The general secretary of the City Congress Committee, S.Panduranga Rao, was found dead under suspicious circumstances near a railway crossing at Kandikal Gate here on Wednesday morning.

The Congress leader, who left home at Chatrinaka around 5.45 a.m. for his routine morning walk alongside the railway tracks, was found dead by a gateman after the Bangalore Express went past the Kandikal Gate station just after 6 a.m. His body, apparently run over by the Express train, was severed into pieces and strewn around. He was 41.

Following news of Rao's death, Congress workers in large numbers gathered at his residence in Chatrinaka. Several trains operating on the route had to be stopped for well over an hour. Black flags were put up at road intersections and some shops downed shutters in the old city.

The Labour Minister, Mr. C. Krishna Yadav, and senior Congress leaders, including Mr. P.Janardhan Reddy and Mr. G. Niranjan, and the Telangana Sadhana Samithi leader, Mr. A. Narendra, also visited the place and consoled the family members.

According to family members, Panduranga Rao was to organise a dharna at the Imlibun bus station in support of the agitating R.T.C. employees today. He was in the habit of taking a morning walk along the railway tracks for several years. This morning, he was said to have also stopped at a relative's place near Kandikal Gate and chatted with them. But, none could offer any clue as to how the mishap had occurred with no eye-witnesses coming forward.

``I have told him several times to stop going along the tracks for morning walk. But he had just laughed it off,'' lamented his friend, Mr. G. Raja Ratnam. However, many of the gathered friends and relatives, while ruling out the suicide theory, also refuse to believe that the Congress leader would have been hit accidentally by the train. ``He was an alert person. I don't know how he had failed to see the train,'' Mr. Raja Ratnam observed.

Meanwhile, the Kachiguda Railway Police have booked a case of suspicious death under Sec. 174 Cr.P.C and handed over the body to the family after post mortem. He was later cremated at Nallavagu.

Syed Jehangir, SI, Kachiguda Railway Police, said the accident could have occurred when Panduranga Rao was walking along the tracks. ``While Bangalore Express was passing Kandikal Gate, another train, Shamshabad Local, also passed the station. Maybe he was caught between the two trains. But it is difficult to hazard a guess till the investigations are complete,'' he said.

Panduranga Rao, who joined active politics in the late 1970s, was also the Chairman of the Hyderabad City Congress (I) Committee Panchayat Raj Abhiyan & Nagara Palika Vibhag apart from being actively involved in the development of the Akkanna Madanna Temple.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : Cyclone: Naidu writes to PM on Central aid
Next     : Anthrax scare in Warangal, Srikakulam