MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao not first victim of Maoist fury over mining

Visakhapatnam: The Maoists began carrying out their threat to kill politicians to prevent mining for bauxite in the Agency area in 2004, just months before the Congress came to power in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

They killed Matyarasa Venkata Raju, 50, husband of M. Mani Kumari, then a minister for tribal welfare in the TD government. Raju was at sitting in his car when a teenager shot him in the head and walked away into the forests.

Strongly objecting to bauxite mining in the Agency area, Maoists killed the zilla parishad vice-chairman Samidi Ravi Shankar, a Congress leader from Hukumpeta, on May 28, 2007. Korra Chittibabu, 33, mandal parishad president from Hukumpeta, was killed on May 18, 2009.

In 2010, the extremists shot dead U. Somalingam, vice-chairman of zilla parishad, in Chintapalle mandal on May 10 and Sagina Somalingam, mandal vice-president and CPI leader, on February 12.

After killing Sagi Venkataramana, sarpanch of Jerrela in GK Veedhi on January 6, 2016, the Maoist stopped their attacks as their message to stop the proposed bauxite mining was taken seriously by local leaders.