Baloju Venkateswara Rao (50), MPTC member and Jarta Rambabu (40), village sarpanch, were thrashed with gun butts before being shot dead. While Venkateswara Rao was shot in the chest, Rambabu was shot on the temple.

The entire village witnessed the Naxalites, numbering over forty, going berserk, beating the villagers indiscriminately for over half-an-hour.

Bodoju Ramulamma, Thonta Pentamma, Durga and five other women activists were also beaten up. It is stated that forty extremists of the People's War Group stormed into the village shortly after midnight and switched off the main transformer plunging the village into darkness. Later, they split into four groups of ten each and executed the assault.

One group went to the house of MPTC memberVenkateswara Rao who was asleep in the verandah. They woke him up and after bashing with the gun butt shot him in the chest. The second group which attacked the house of sarpanch Rambabu did the same and shot him in his temple. The third group approached women activist Bodoju Ramulamma's house and called her out as akka. They forced her to open the door and thrashed her with sticks, inflicting severe injuries all over the body. When some journalists visited her in the morning she was unable to sit or even move from the bed. She said the raiders attacked her and fellow women activists for revolting against them and for locking the houses of the PWG village committee members. They charged her with colluding with the police, causing serious obstructions to their movement in the area.

Sarpanch Rambabu was a PWG activist and member of the village committee seven years back. The PWG suspected him of acting as police informant and supporting the women activists' revolt against extremists. His name was onthe hit list announced by the PWG which appeared in a Telugu daily yesterday. However, the name of the MPTC member was not on the list.After the completion of their half-an-hour midnight operation, the Naxalites stuck two posters in the village. One poster said "Anyone opposing PWG would meet the same fate".

In the second one, the PWG gave certain directives to the villagers. "Women activists sangham was formed with active support of police," the poster claimed. It ordered the women to change their attitude towards the PWG and remove the locks on village committee members' houses, return the lands they occupied. The police have rushed more forces through diversion routes as a precaution against mine blasts.

Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.