Death of Three in Family: Revenue Officials 'Sought Bribe to Rectify Land Records'

Anantapur: Suspected suicide of three members of a family in Vontimitta mandal in Kadapa district took a curious turn when the police said the family head, Subba Rao, killed his wife and daughter after injecting sedation and then ended his own life by putting his head on the railway track.

Subba Rao alleged in his suicide note that revenue officials troubled his family by demanding a bribe to change some land records.

“He fell under the Venkatadri Express train near Vontimitta,” Kadapa DSP Sharif told the media on Sunday. A preliminary investigation revealed that Subba Rao was in deep debt after getting addicted to cricket betting. He also took hand loans.

The police are investigating the complaint in the suicide note, which said revenue officials wrongly changed the ownership of three acres of his land. The suicide note accused the revenue officials of changing the ownership of the land to the name of another person and demanding a bribe to set things right.

Subba Rao was found dead on the railway track while his wife Padmavathi and daughter Vinay were found dead under suspicious circumstances in the house at K Madhavaram village in Vontimitta mandal in Kadapa district.

The issue turned viral on various media platforms and opposition party leaders N Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan came down heavily on the YSRC government.

CPI state secretary Gujjala Eeswaraiah and other party leaders expressed concern over the incident and sought a payment of Rs.1 cr as compensation to the surviving members of the family and a government job for the elder daughter, Lakshmi.

The CPI leader noted that there already was a series of instances of corruption at the level of revenue officials, and even a superintendent of the Kadapa collectorate was trapped by ACB on the day the chief minister visited his hometown.

The bodies of the wife, husband and daughter were cremated in their village after a post mortem at the government hospital.