Former Andhra Pradesh speaker Kodela Sivaprasad Rao commits suicide

Hyderabad: Former speaker of the Andhra Pradesh legislative Assembly and senior most leader of opposition Telugu Desam Party Kodela Sivaprasad Rao committed suicide on Monday morning. He was 72.

Hyderabad deputy commissioner of police, West Zone, AR Srinivas said that the post mortem at Osmania Hospital confirmed that Rao hanged himself.

The incident, which sent shock waves across the political spectrum, occurred on Monday at his residence in the Banjara Hills area. His family members rushed him to the nearby Basava Tarakam Hospital where doctors declared him dead. Alerted by the hospital, Banjara Hills police registered a case of unnatural death and launched an investigation.

Several TDP leaders blamed the YS Jaganmohan Reddy government for Rao’s death as he was facing a lot of harassment from the police and other government agencies. Recently he was in the news as the police booked a case of theft against Rao and his son Sivaram on charges of taking away furniture, computers and air conditioners from the state assembly.

Rao had denied any wrongdoing on his part and said that the assembly staff had moved the items to his residence before the elections and he had asked them to take it back after he lost the elections.

Rao had also suffered heart attack in August and wrote an open letter to the government not to harass him.

According to the statements given by Rao’s family members to the police, he had breakfast with his wife at around 10am and went to his room on the first floor of the house at 10.10am. After some time when his wife went there she found the room locked from inside. When she did not get any response, she alerted the security guard. The guard broke open the door to find Rao hanging from the ceiling fan. At around 10.40am he was rushed to Basava Tarakam hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival. Significantly, he was the founder chairman of the hospital named after the wife of TDP founder NT Rama Rao.

As the news spread, a large number of TDP workers and Rao’s supporters gathered at his residence and hospital. Former minister S Chandramohan Reddy talking to the media held Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy for the incident.

“It is not suicide but a murder. If a senior politician like Sivaprasad Rao was forced to take his own life, you can imagine the pressure he was facing”, Reddy said.

A shocked TDP President N Chandrababu Naidu was closeted with senior party leaders at the TDP office in Guntur to discuss the situation.

Former finance minister Y Ramakrishnudu said that continuous harassment by the Jagan government drove Rao to his death.

“It is an irreparable loss to the state as well as TDP,” he said.

Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Telanganan YS Jaganmohan Reddy and K Chandrasekhar Rao and Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu were among the top political leaders who expressed their shock and grief over the death of Sivaprasad Rao.

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Who was Kodela Sivaprasad Rao?

Kodela Sivaprasad Rao was a veteran politician from the Guntur district. He was elected to the state assembly six times during his 37-year career.

He joined the Telugu Desam Party right from its creation by NT Rama Rao in 1982 and was elected to the assembly five times consecutively from 1983 to 1999.

After losing in two subsequent elections, he again became a member of state Assembly in 2014 and during the TDP rule he served as the speaker of the state assembly. However he was defeated in the elections earlier this year.

He was home minister in the NTR cabinet and served as panchayat raj minister in the first cabinet of Chandrababu Naidu in 1990s.

A post graduate in medical sciences, he was a reputed doctor and ran his own nursing home in Narsaraopet. He is survived by his wife and three children, all of them medical doctors.