Date:28/01/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/01/28/stories/2005012802510500.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Police enter forest on trail of `errant' naxals

ADILABAD, JAN. 27. The Adilabad police have sent special parties to the forest to arrest naxalites who are accused in the killing of Lingaiah. This is for the first time that police have ventured into the forest pursuing `errant' naxalites after the peace talks. The accused in the murder of the Congress worker and former sarpanch of Bopparam in Kotapally mandal included Padmakka, the Chennur-Sirpur area committee secretary and her husband Chippakurthi Ravi alias Sudershan who is commander of the Chennur dalam and seven others.

"We have sent the parties into the jungles in search of Lingaiah's murderers. This is the second murder committed by naxalites and we cannot keep silent when law is broken so vehemently. Two murders were committed already. I think it is high time we took steps to control murders," observed Adilabad Superintendent of Police, Kripanand Tripathi Ujela. The SP said that neither Lingaiah nor Kathuri Pocham, murdered earlier, was police informant. "There is ample evidence that in Lingaiah's murder the naxalites acted as hired killers. They had intervened in a family problem related to Lingaiah's son-in-law, Shankar," he added.