Andhra double murder: NIA issues ‘wanted’ notices for top Maoist leaders

NIA issued 'wanted' notices for top Maoist leaders in connection with the double murder of former Andhra Pradesh MLAs Siveri Soma and Kidari Sarveswara Rao.

Visakhapatnam: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday issued ‘wanted’ notices for top Maoist leaders in connection with the double murder of former Andhra Pradesh MLAs Siveri Soma and Kidari Sarveswara Rao. The Maoist leaders for whom wanted notices were issued are Gajarla Ravi alias Uday and Venkata Ravi Chaitanya alias Aruna.

A wanted notice is a public announcement by a law enforcement agency that they want to question someone in connection with a crime.

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The NIA, in its statement, said Aruna and Gajarla Ravi are the key executors of the Maoist strategies in Andhra Pradesh. The agency informed further that Aruna led the Maoist group that killed the former MLAs. The double murder took place while Kidari Sarveswara Rao and Siveri Soma were visiting an interior village of the Arakau assembly constituency of Andhra Pradesh.

It was alleged that a large number of Maoists, many of them in plain clothes, surrounded the vehicles that both of them were travelling in, and killed them.

Kidari Sarveswara Rao was a sitting MLA of Arakau at the time he was killed while Siveri Soma was a former MLA from the same constituency. NIA re-registered the case on December 6, 2018 and took up the investigation.

In June 2021, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case against a woman area committee member of the Maoist group.

The NIA said the woman Maoist leader, whom they identified as Kalavathi alias Bhavani, was instrumental in providing logistical support to the team that carried out the killing.