GITAM Founder M V V S Murthy Killed In US Car Crash

AP MLC M V V S Murthy, 76, and four others died in a road accident in the USA today.

Four others were injured in the mishap.

The mishap occurred when their car rammed into a truck coming in the opposition direction near Parks Highway.

Velivolu Basava Punnaiah, Veeramachineni Sivaramakrishna and V B R Chowdary were among the others who died in the mishap. Kadiyala Venkataratnam was being treated at a hospital in Alaska for grave injuries.

Murthy had gone to the US to attend an alumni meet in California, and the group of people were on their way to visit a wildlife sanctuary in Alaska when the incident happened.

Telugu Association of North America (TANA) members are coordinating with the US authorities to have the TDP leader's body brought back to the state.

Murthy was the founder of the Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM) institutions. He founded GITAM at Rushikonda near Visakhapatnam. The institution has now been granted a "deemed to be university" status, and has campuses in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

Murthy had joined the TDP in 1983, and was close to the party founder-president late N T Rama Rao. He had been elected to the Lok Sabha from Visakhapatnam for two terms - from 1991 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2004. He had also served as Chairman of the Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority from 1987 to 1989, and was a serving MLC.

Ap Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Deputy Chief Ministers K E Krishna Murthy and N Chinarajappa, Assembly Speaker Kodela Siva Prasad Rao, Council Chairman N Md Farook, ministers and MPs condoled Murthy's death. In a message, Naidu said, "I was shocked to learn about the death of Murthy. His services as an MP and an MLC are memorable. His death is a deep loss to the fields of education and politics. It is a personal loss to me."

Naidu also expressed his anguish over the death of many TDP leaders in road accidents.

Deputy Chief Minister Krishna Murthy recalled that he and Murthy had both been elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1991. "I lost a good friend," he said.