Former Andhra Pradesh speaker kills himself at Hyderabad home
HYDERABAD:SENIOR Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader and former Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao allegedly committed suicide at his residence on Monday, according to his family.
The TDP leader, popularly known as Kodela, was 72. He is survived by his wife Sasikala, son Shivaram and daughter Vijayalakshmi. His younger son Satyanarayana died in a road mishap a few years ago.
According to Vijayalakshmi, Kodela went to his room on the first floor of their house at Banjara Hills around 11 am. “I was getting ready to take my mother to hospital, as she was not keeping well. After half-an-hour, I went to tell my father but he did not open the door,” she said in her complaint. She broke open the door and found him hanging from the ceiling. “We immediately rushed him to Nandamuri Basavarama Tarakam hospital.”
Kodela has been the chairman of the hospital in the past. Hospital CEO R V Prabhakar Rao said Kodela was brought around 11.35 am in unconscious state. “We did our best for his survival. We declared him dead at around 12.39 pm,” he said.
Banjara Hills police, led by assistant commissioner of police KR Srinivas, visited Kodela’s residence and the hospital. A case of suspicious death has been registered and the body has been sent for a post-mortem. Prima facie, it’s a case of suicide as there was eight-inch deep marks of rope around the neck, the doctors said in the report to submitted the police. There were no other injuries on the body, the report said.
Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar said three teams have been constituted to probe the death from all angles.
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Andhra Pradesh governor Bishwabhushan Harichandan, AP chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu expressed condolences over the untimely death of Kodela.
A medical doctor by profession, Kodela had been associated with the TDP right from its inception in 1982 and was a close associate of former chief minister and party founder N T Rama Rao.
He had been elected as a legislator for six times and was a cabinet minister during NTR’S tenure and Naidu regime. He was the first speaker of the residuary Andhra Pradesh assembly in his last term. In the recent assembly elections, Kodela lost to YSR Congress party candidate Ambati Rambabu in Sattenapalli.
Kodela was once booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with a bomb explosion at his residence in Narsaraopet in 1999 which killed four of his followers, but was exonerated.
Chandrababu Naidu alleged that Kodela had resorted to extreme step as he could not bear the humiliation being meted out to him by the YSR Congress government which had implicated him in several cases. “He was under severe psychological pressure...” Senior YSRC leader and state minister for urban development Botsa Satyanarayana, while condoling the death of Kodela, accused the TDP leaders of politicizing the death.