Andhra chief minister calls attack on Reddy a drama

YSRCP leader refuses to give statement to state police on knife attack

Even as the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) president Jaganmohan Reddy was discharged from a private hospital in Hyderabad after treatment, the alleged knife attack on him remains shrouded in mystery.

With the ruling Telugu Desam and main opposition YSRCP pointing fingers at each other, governor ESL Narasimhan rushed to Delhi and met the Prime Minister.

Narasimhan, who had earlier sought details of the incident from the state police chief, submitted a report to the Prime Minister about the situation in the state.

Meanwhile, several questions about the incident remained unanswered. The most important of them was how a youth working as a waiter in the airport canteen managed to bring a knife in the high security area and attack the leader of the opposition.

Second was why Reddy went ahead with his departure to Hyderabad with injury soon after such a major incident.

Reddy was discharged from the City Neuro Centre Banjara Hills yesterday and doctors advised him to rest for another five days. Earlier officials of the Special Investigation Team of Andhra Pradesh police met him in hospital to record his statement. But sources said he refused to give any statement saying he had no faith in Andhra Pradesh police. Later he left for his Lotus Pond residence in Hyderabad.

Injury on arm

Reddy had suffered a bleeding injury on his left arm when a youth attacked him in the VIP lounge in Visakhapatnam airport on Thursday. The assailant J. Srinivas, a 30-year-old college dropout, was caught on the spot and later handed over to the police.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in his first reaction to the incident called it an “orchestrated drama” and suspected the hand of “someone” in Delhi behind it.

He also wondered how the authorities at the airport and airlines allowed an injured person to travel.