Police Foil Chalo Assembly Rally With Mass Arrests

Hundreds of activists of the Left parties and other organisations across Telangana were arrested on Wednesday to foil their march to the State Assembly in protest the killing of two Maoists Shruthi and Vidyasagar on September 16 by the police in the Warangal district.

Leaders and workers of various people's organisations were detained in the districts to prevent them from heading towards Hyderabad to participate in the march called for by Telangana Democratic Front (TDF). Protestors were arrested in the Warangal, Khammam, Mahabubnagar, Karimnagar, Medak and Nalgonda districts. CPI-M Telangana State secretary T Veerabhadram said some 3,000 to 4,000 activists were arrested across the State "undemocratically".

The Assembly building was virtually turned into a fortress as the police imposed restrictions on all roads leading towards the Assembly. A large number of policemen were deployed in the area to prevent protesters. The police also put up barricades on all the entry roads into the capital and arrested those coming from the districts to take part in the agitation.

Citing reasons for denying permission for the rally, the police said that they had learnt that the Telangana Democratic Front (TDF) was formed at the instance of the CPI-Maoist, and that the program was being organised in support of its cause and the ideology.

Police thus apprehended Maoist cadres, supporters, sympathisers and activists of all mass organisations of the CPI-Maoist from Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and the Andhra-Odisha border.

Revolutionary Writers Association's Varavara Rao, academicians P L Viveswara Rao and G Vinod Kumar, and others were among those taken into preventive custody.

Eminent academician Chukka Ramaiah was also kept under house arrest in Hyderabad. He said that arrests would not stop the movement.

The arrests led to mild tension at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram, Bagh Lingampally, where the Left parties' activists were expected to congregate for the agitational program, when leaders Chada Venkat Reddy and Tammineni Veerabhadram staged an impromptu sit-in on the main road to protest the arrests of their cadre.

Despite the clampdown, raising slogans against the TRS government and calling for an end to "fake encounters", supporters of the cause took out rallies in different parts of the State.

370 organisations, including 10 Left parties which fought for a separate Telangana state, have come together under the banner of the TDF to condemn the killings that they term a "fake encounter". The TDF is demanding a probe by a sitting judge.