Telangana People's Leader

Senior Telangana people’s leader Akula Bhoomaiah was brutally murdered by state actors in Hyderabad on 24 December 2013 at 9:45 pm. Bhoomaiah was returning from the local Press Club at Basheerbagh after a book launch on Telangana when a mysterious Garbage Tipping Van of the Municipal Corporation waiting at Vidyanagar first hit his scooter dislodging him and then ran over him till he died. This was witnessed by the people who live in the vicinity. They then promptly caught the driver who was attempting to flee after ensuring Bhoomaiah’s death. On being taken to the nearby police station and after repeated enquiries by democratic rights activists, it became clear that he was neither the regular driver of that van and nor was he supposed to be in that job. Perhaps, he was employed solely for the purpose of killing Bhoomaiah and to make it look like an accident. It is clear that not just was this no accident but was a premeditated act of murder of a man who was the president of the Telangana Praja Front (TPF).

Akula Bhoomaiah was a long-standing leader of the teacher’s movement in Andhra Pradesh. In fact, he never limited himself to the teacher’s movement and actively participated in all social and revolutionary movements of the people in Telangana since the 1960s. As a student, he participated actively in the first phase of the separate Telangana movement in the late 1960s. Why did the coastal Andhra ruling clique choose to assassinate Bhoomaiah now? Bhoomaiah and his organisation, the TPF, not just stood for the separation movement for the statehood of Telangana, but also for the people of all oppressed classes and communities, including adivasis, strove for their equal share in land and resources and fought for their democratic rights along with their right to statehood. This is not a stand taken by any other political force in Telangana. Though TPF’s perspective is singularly and deeply democratic in nature, all ruling class parties of Telangana, including Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), failed to adopt this democratic stand despite sometimes working in alliance with TPF. But it is the ruling class cliques and their exploitative leadership of the coastal Andhra region that have been deeply irked by the slogan of democratic Telangana. Therefore, most leaders of the people’s organisations in Telangana have openly expressed that Bhoomaiah’s death is not an accident but a premeditated assassination executed by the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema ruling clique.