Hyderabad, July 22: TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu and 73 of his men were stuffed into an airplane in Aurangabad and flown back to Hyderabad where he touched down to a hero’s welcome at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad tonight. The return of the TDP team ended the five-day drama that began when Naidu was stopped at the AP-Maharashtra border in their bid to visit the Babli irrigation project on July 16. The Maharashtra police arrested them and lodged them in judicial custody in a mangy ITI building in Dharmabad. After several twists and turns this morning, the police took the TDP leaders to Aurangabad, withdrew all cases against them, and put them on a plane to Hyderabad.
Naidu, looking very tired, emerged from the terminal at Shamshabad airport at about 10.30 pm, 45 minutes after the flight landed. Thousands of party workers were there, among them wife Bhuvaneshwari and son Lokesh, busting their lungs with slogans lionising their hero. After arrival, Naidu decided to continue the agitation by organising a dharna at the Mahatma Gandhi statue at the Assembly tomorrow morning. There was heavy jostling at the airport and it became difficult for the TDP president to reach his vehicle amidst the crush.
Police made a way for him with great difficulty.
Naidu climbed into a jeep and drove in a long convoy to Care Hospital in Banjara Hills where his injured colleagues were admitted.
The first to emerge from the airport were TDP women legislators who were taken to their vehicles in wheel chairs. Narrating their nightmare, some of them broke down. Said legislator Paritala Sunita: “The area where we were lodged looked as if it was a place where encounters take place. We never thought we would get out of it alive.” The TDP leaders were literally forced into the flight at Aurangabad. The Maharashtra police wanted them off their hands at any cost because tensions had been building up outside the Aurangabad airport.Scores of locals had gathered, demanding the AP politicos be packed off to Hyderabad. On Tuesday morning, the police had bused the TDP agitators to Aurangabad but they refused to board the flight for over three hours, insisting they wouldn’t go home without seeing Babli.
Seething with rage, Naidu shouted at the policemen: “Either you take us to Babli or to jail.” When the TDP leaders didn’t budge, police used force to stuff them into the craft. In the morning too, the police made them board a bus at Dharamabad, took them to Aurangabad with the intention of lodging them in a jail there but took them to the airport instead, since by the time they reached Aurangabad, the Maharashtra government had withdrawn the cases registered against them. When the bus, after a journey of eight hours, reached Aurangabad at 6.30 pm, police told Naidu and other leaders that the cases had been dropped and asked them to go home. Naidu refused to get into the flight and sat on the runway with his colleagues. The day started with shifting the TDP delegation to jail.
When the leaders refused to get into the vehicles, police had to use force. They roughed up the MLAs and MPs and pushed Naidu around. .
The policemen kicked the MLAs, MPs, and MLCs, and beat them up with lathis, unleashing a torrent of abuse. The injured including Nama Nageswara Rao, Kottakota Dayakar Reddy, E Dayakar Rao, Gangula Kamalakar and and Y B Rajendra Prasad. Several women representatives too faced the wrath of the cops. Even gunment were beaten up.
It all started when the Maharashtra police served breakfast to TDP leaders at the Dharmabad ITI campus. The TDP delegation sensing that they would be taken back to AP, locked themselves in their room.
Police broke open the doors and pounced on them. Naidu too was pushed to a corner. When the NSG commandos blocked the police, they too were beaten up. They did not spare MLAs who were being administered saline and snatched the sachets without consulting the doctors.
Women MLAs began crying. In the melee, the shirts of several MLAs were torn.
“They treated us like animals,’’ said MLA P Raghunath Reddy. “Ten policemen isolated one MLA and attacked him,’’ said the personal assistant to Markapur MLA Kandula Narayana Reddy.
–Agencies